AT THE STOA

Orpheus looks back , he cannot hear Eurydice follow him out of Hades. He had lost her once to the underworld, moved the gods by his deep song of grief, and was given leave to retrieve his wife. Without thinking too much about it, one can say that he looks back out of impatience, or that he looks back out of mistrust, or that he looks back just because he's an idiot. Whichever of these three you choose, it certainly can be argued that Orpheus was given a chance, a second one, to be with his beloved, a rare gift and a rarer actuality. That Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding is this myth's first tragedy, that Orpheus lost her again , after being given permission by the gods to get her back, is its second. Briefly, again without thinking too much about it, this myth has two tragedies, both involving loss, the second one more poignant than the first because of the chance at retrieval lost. It is one thing to lose something precious; and it is quite another, heavier, realer t...

I am again  in Manila. The packers emptied my apartment, and because this is how things go here, I had a beer with them when all was done. One of them slit his leg on a beer bottle by accident. The blood was dark over the concrete floor, and I noticed he was bleeding maroon and was afraid the shard cut a vein. I bound the gash, knowing that it needed stitches, knowing that there's only so much blood a body could lose, knowing that the gash might be infected, knowing that he won't have it stitched no matter what I say. This is sometimes how things go here as well. Maybe it will heal on its own. Now I am here in the apartment in the capital, briefly wondered about that boy's wound and then forgot about it for all the shit that I need to move in. Anyone familiar to packing up is privy to the sheer saturating feeling of looking at a mess of boxes and bags and the near-detritus that make up their lives, and of how to reorder these so as to resemble a sense of sense. I looked...