The Queen of Erickson Avila depicts man’s wheeling fate – unpredictable and unexpected.

It encompasses a twist from obtaining goods until the persona ends up with a narrowed sovereign in a coffin. Too narrow that it makes the reckoning soul lament. The poem attempts to narrate life’s uncertainty.  There are two portions of the piece. The first part portrays the persona’s ownership of the limelight while the second part is the The Queen’s  abdication.

Man’s fate cannot be pin pointed accurately. There is no assurance of what may come next. Being an accolade magnate gives nothing but temporary possessions that may even mislead a person. In the end of our lives we will still be jailed in a coffin – lifeless. No matter how much we gain, The Queen will still be abdicated from her throne.

The poem’s ending portrays an unaccepted death, no triumph of any sort. Death maybe symbolic in many ways as far as one’s legacy is concerned. But to draw an image of a coffin for one’s death emphasizes the mourning and defiance over death. It as if a dead is a prisoner. And that parole is of no possibility.

The Queen is an exemplar of an evolved poetry since it adapts to the fast changing world. By structure and length, it consumes less time to read. Its linguistic command doesn't select audiences. It approaches the reader as rapid as possible and as simple as comprehensible. This technique easily exposes the message, unlike other poetries that tends to be proverbial or riddle type therefore blurring the imagery to be perceived by the reader. Avila also seems to parallel the surprising elements the Flash fiction by employing it in the poem. Flash fiction tends broaden itself to adjust to the short tempered readers of our common period. Ergo, the poet calibrates his words to the audience of his time.       

Have you ever seen a monster? Been chased by someone you fear? Or meet someone from a far place? Probably, every question abovementioned is possible in your dreams. Dreams are these unlimited and involuntary shuttering of imageries while sleeping or unconscious. It is a human experience that whets everyone’s interest. Amazingly, this human experience is not just exclusive to us. It extends to certain types of birds and most of the mammals, here the animal kingdoms hares some commonality.

Dream takes a toll on the man’s interest. In fact, there is a study centered on dreams- oneirology. The interpretation of dreams even took created a great faction between world’s most prominent psychologists namely Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

There recognizable characteristics of dreams that carry a lot of us. Dreams are more like a pantomime or silent movies. It composes more of images than scent, taste or sound. You are more likely to see yourself flying or falling than hear your roommates talking.

"A dream is, therefore, among other things a projection: an externalization of an internal process." -- Sigmund Freud.

They also show imprints of our personality. Deep in our mind live our hidden thoughts, desires or emotions. Aside from slipping these thoughts in your tongue, we dream of these as if the thoughts remind us that they exist. And that they need to be expressed. 

Basic conflict: Desire to establish an autonomous and independent life either through a career or marriage, preferably the latter, vs. fear of leaving the security provided by the family.

Spotlight dream A1: I dreamed that I volunteered to go overseas as a teacher. I went to Italy to teach the children there. My dream consisted of leaving my family and being very graciously welcomed in Italy by an Army officer and his wife. I was married shortly after my arrival there. Most of my dream was the difficulty I had leaving home.

Interpretation: The basic conflict is clearly projected into this dream. She does leave home, even the country, yet despite the presence of parental substitutes in Italy and a speedy marriage, much of the dream is concerned with the difficulty she has in leaving her home. That the dreamer is aware of the conflict is indicated by the explanatory comment appended to the dream. "I guess this dream has to do with my fear of leaving home. I have never been away for more than a week and my folks keep insisting it would be wise for me to leave for a while."

On 1947, Calvin S. Hall had this interpretation of a personality through dream assessment. The dream clearly showed the defiance of the girl to parental submission.

Sometimes people’s dreams seem to be opaque in nature, uneasily understood. The reason why these dreams become hard to interpret is that they come in symbols. Such symbols may have interpretations relatively varying. Dream moods, a website which serves a dictionary provides this:

Lamp

To see a lamp in your dream symbolizes guidance, hope, inspiration, enlightenment and reassurance. If the lamp is dimly lit or unlit, then it suggests that you are feeling overwhelmed by emotional issues. You have lost your ability to find your own way or see things clearly.

To see a broken lamp in your dream suggests that you are shutting out those who are trying to help you. It is also symbolic of disappointments, misfortune and bad luck.

Sausage

To see or eat sausage in your dream symbolizes material values. It may also represent the phallus and thus refers to sexual feelings or tension. 

Dreams also concertize our memories. As you notice, dreams seem to be continuing. They tend to be like television series as it appears as a similar continued dream from the past. Actually, these dreams resembles reality our past experiences. They recur in such a manner that they are derived from one origin- our memory. McNamara’s studies show high similarities upon comparing a diary to one’s dreams. If a man visits a blue room, he will most likely dream of a blue room. In this way dreams become aids to our recall of thoughts.    

Our surreal thoughts carry a lot of meanings and reflections to our self especially our personality. Dreams cannot be compounded in a single book, they are man’s unfathomable experiences that we continue to unravel. 

Did the question ever struck your thought on what will happen to the future of humanity. Given the complexities of this common period, are we yet to evolve?

 Evolution in a plain sense means continuous process changing form simple to complex or simply turning to a better sate. Man’s evolutionary trace is founded on the idea that humans descend from apes. Then this ape turns to a man through various external changes in the course of time. This process, as what Charles Darwin coins, is Natural Selection. The one who fits with the nature is the one who is most likely to survive the next generation. Therefore, it is humans who adopt the order of nature. By adaptation, we change biologically to cope with the natural standard. Until now evolution does not cease to end its job. It is still a living machine that is meant to changes us.

Experts have been dealing with this Darwinian thought. A lot of theories came in to define the dilemma surrounding man’s evolution. But between and among these theories comes the Charles Darwin of our age – Chip Walter. He filled the words in AllThingsHuman.net and www.chipwalter.com. He also writes for Slate, Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American. His latest book “Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story Of How and Why We Survived,” shares simple but astonishing views on the evolution next door. The book was available last February 29, 2013.

One of the book’s arguments is that Natural Selection will mutate man as it mutated the previous living things. And that it doesn’t end. Humans, as the last apes standing, are not exempt from biological alterations. But adaptation will not be initiated by nature. In this contemporary era, technology shares the role of mutating humans. It begins form the very food we eat to the gadgets we use.

“In ourselves we may finally have me our match: an evolutionary force to which even we cannot adapt.”

-       Chip Walter

Man, as rational animals, are highly creative most especially on their needs and wants. We are holistic animals with formidable mental faculties, innate emotions and compact physique. We have been busy changing the earth. But every action equates to different consequences. Man’s creations cause many consequences including the very end of our human existence.

Aside from the technology that will stirs the alteration of human. Stress comes in as a psychological factor which may change the biological structure of humans gradually.

Gradual change to due to technology will commence. Man will change artificially change due to genetic engineering. These new forms of man are called transhumanists. They will transcend the boundaries that we have now including our current biological constraints. They are the next versions of human. Their capacities go beyond the normal speed, strength and other human qualities. Walter also underscored that blood especially its hemoglobin may be commercialized and be set as a commodity needed for survival. The male and female species will be passé. Man’s reproductive identity will be futile; meaning our capacity to produce offspring will be less possible. The creation of humans will be on genetic centers. 

Asteroid collision and global cataclysms will not only be the threat to humanity but even our very own creations. It is in these future events that we are changed and an artificial natural selection is established. This clearly modifies the order of natural selection by which man has been used to adopt with. Vividly, it is man’s invention gives birth to consequences that threaten the humanity’s existence. 

The book provides an innovative approach to continue the perspectives of Darwin. It draws a modern essence on man’s future evolution.       

The story of Ada dumped in an unusual family business - a business which you may need to call them aswang or tiktik for hire.

Hado effect reminds me of Jose Garcia Villa’s, a National Artist in Literature, “Footnote to Youth” where the Dodong’s family tree suffers a repetitive cycle of men drawn to puppy love, early marriage and heavy marital obligation. The point comparison is angled at the family tree cycle.

Excerpt:

“My grandmother summoned my two older brothers (who were spared in inheriting the family business).”

 Unlike Villa, Gulin took a feminine touch on the major characters since women bear the deviant familial business of abortion. I cannot fully arrive at a conclusion of the intertextuality between Gulin and Villa’s texts. One thing may be certain, the text are in a domestic color. The primary reason of which we belong to a family is to survive biologically and then sociological needs such as belongingness follows (see Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs). As we live with a family, we are trained to conform to societal conventions – that of which makes us civil than savage. It is therefore in family that we primarily derive civilization and humane acts. Ironically, Hado effect breaks this notion, since Ada learns to kill unborn humans through her family. One could even say that it does not only break this notion but a concept of a societal norm.

Sadly, Gulin’s fiction mirrors a real world of abortionists scattered over the globe. Some would be literally professionals of abortions and even work in hospitals. We are now reminded that we are gradually deviating to the human that we should be. Early humans of the past would have no historical accounts for such.

But why do we do we commit to such industry? The blameworthy of this inhuman act is Capitalism. We are skewed to act differently to accord not to society but to consumerism. Extreme capitalism and consumerism stifles the people that they surrender to unusual modes of livelihood. Priority, now, is angled to economic needs than life itself. Here, whatever means one takes as long as it justifies the end, becomes accepted. As Cirilo F. Bautista said in his poem (A man falls to his death), “Blood is nothing. Space is all. Is.”

Our society is geared to making money out of death. It is uneasy to think that the death itself becomes a commodity much like the things we buy in 7/11. Crap, life becomes a 9/11.

Did we see Ada attempt to jam the family’s system? No, since she was molded by her grandmother and mother to an extent of that in her very mind lies an assassin of the unborn. There was even no evident realizing of a self error. Ada, in fact, corrects herself by aligning to darkness. 

One would often see Professor Nanette Conception-Narito (not Naruto) walking by the hallways, calling in one of red angle’s phone booth every afternoon or dropping by the College of Education’s offices.  She would always leave the portrait, hoping not to be still like the campus walls. She’s almost everywhere.

Her students would sometimes be annoyed of her ‘narito way’ composed of energizing rituals- vigorous clapping, stretching, arms forward, shouting yells. But after a full semester of unfailing energizers, everyone will just take the routine as a part of their day.

She owes her life of routine and motion to her parents. As a daughter of a Brigadier General and a Principal, doubt nothing why she possesses such qualities. Her childhood days were a balance of enjoyment and disciple rather than stifling. When asked about her thoughts on whose path to take (mother or father), she readily replies, “Mother!” Prof. Narito stressed that she doesn’t want to cut the lineage of teachers in the family tree. Aspirations to the teaching career came at a less mature stage. She would be inspired when she witnessed her mother teaching to a point of childish mimicry.

 Being a daughter of a general and a principal is her edge. Their modes of discipline would catapult her to flying colors. She graduated Valedictorian at E. Rodriguez Elementary school with Presidential merits. While in High school, she finished the academic race as an honor student at the University of the Philippines Preparatory High School. Until she reached her doctoral studies, Prof. Narito consistently bagged a record of being a scholar and an academic achiever. But she didn’t miss the high school giggles,   “I was once UP Miss Alma Mater.”

Division of City Schools and Jose Abad Santos High School opened its doors; there she started to be a teacher and a coordinator as well. “It was a feeling of accomplishment.” She was overwhelmed upon reaching her dream.

In the 1980’s she got married to Mr. Aristeo C. Narito, a real estate broker. A hard facet of her life came in when she gave birth to her first born. She was torn in joggling her role as a teacher, mother and wife.  Initially, balancing took a laborious effort but she got used to it. The labor was brought to a higher level when she had twins while on her doctoral studies. “Imagine, tending three cribs.”  With a very supportive family she was able to hurdle these maternal challenges.

After finishing doctoral, her mother passed away. There was difficulty in accepting the loss of her great inspiration.  As a way of moving on, she focused on her rearing children. She would take doubled efforts to produce time for her responsibilities. Despite the time constraints, Prof. Narito faced the normal motherly duties such as mentoring her children. That’s why her family appreciates her as teacher and mother, at the same time. With this, she regards her profession as a ‘blessing.’

Who says it is impossible to serve two masters at the same time? Prof. Narito serves a living proof that you can serve two masters with proper management of constrained time.

Dr. Narito’s tale doesn’t speak epics, not even begging “narito ako” for recognition. It plainly stands out as an imprint of the many challenges in the education landscape. Family, especially children, takes a apposite consideration. When asked to choose what to prioritize, she answers “both.” She was able to show in her utterance that deep in her lies a willing soul of a teacher and a mother – unceasing and undying.  She would maintain the harmony of both duties without risking the other. As one of her students said, “Regardless of filling the semester with boom-claps or yahoos, it would always be happy to learn with Maam Narito.”

Dr. Narito is here, living and breathing, to show us that we can find ways to fulfill our duties. She is here to claim not accolade but the virtue of acceptance to every man’s struggle. In every struggle that we have, creativity must triumph. Whenever we are on drought, miserable or helpless, please remember this teacher saying, “Narito ako.”   

  

10         There was inequality.

Pecem ex nihilo

9          Notions of space and time, crumble.

Letter of Resettlement: Due now

8          Newtonian Law, Projectile preserves motion

            Atmosphere of force, air of oppression: resist.

7          At top obverse, cohere

            Masses connive.

6          Parabolic promises drawn to nullity

            Infinite aside rectilinear motion, no increase.

5          Proportional thesis of resettlement, fallacy

            A top’s suppressive motion to retard, mass resistance.

4          Police flocks, mass’ voltage lessened.

            At top, rotation ceases not.

3          Mass gathers stones of trajectories

            At top, to stop, insulators of heat, sound and electricity

2          Pounds increase, numbers upped.

            Clamour stops not. superconductor futile.

1          Greater bodies at top, debilitated: permutes down

            There, less resistance in exponential free spaces –non count

0          Preserved of both progressive and circular,

            For much a longer time, equations balanced.


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