IT IS not merely my poetry. It is the whole body that is infected.
As if I profess not an activist’s outlook. As if I am no ex-revolutionary.
This is probably the effect of drinking too much Starbucks coffee.
The mind is inundated with the apathetic and extremely individualistic,
so-called postmodernly kitsch of coño perspectives. Very latte. Foamy.
Milking with too much air.
Marx said that our social being determines our consciousness. But
that is going too advanced in the struggle.
As a child, while I nurse poverty in cups of unsweetened lugaw, I
had always dreamt of living in a Legoland-like society. Pre-designed
houses with chimneys and no fireplace, mod cars with all-terrain tires
that really work, everything you need just a block away, supra-class
peace, pre-ordered life, interlocking and very organized. Dreams that
always seemed concrete, so brick-red. Dreams that had been repressed
during immersion in the struggle.
However what went down must also necessarily go up. And so now I
witness the resurrection of dead dreams. An ascension brought about
by the sudden emergence of dollar purchasing power. Ah yes, the green
fuel to dead economies is also the chlorophyll to lifeless dreams.
Too bad for Marx, he did not live long enough to witness the rebirth
of Parisian cafes in the Third World within the scattered geography
of Starbucks. Otherwise, he may have philosophised, social space also
determines our consciousness.
You stay too long in Starbucks and you increasingly tend to think
things through no longer in Filipino but in Lasalle Taglish. You stay
too long in Starbucks and you begin to notice things that before were
immaterial—latest brand of sneakers, the curve of an ass, hair
color, bra cup size and style, gym-manufactured muscles, cellphones
with built-in cameras, PDAs, the stripes in a Giordano shirt, piped-in
bossa novas of the Gilbertos, revolutionaries misappropriated as fashion
icon, splayed fingers holding to a straw in a mocha frappucino, lips
puckering to blow a smoke, eyes that look so distant probably imagining
a New World heralded by Topshop, Bench, and Girbaud. You stay too
long in Starbucks and you become addicted to coffee, not so much for
the taste of caffeine but because it is the ‘in’ thing. Caffeinization
in the confines of the cafe nation.
Space therefore is in the early levels of struggle. Space is not
apolitical. Anything that occupies space matters. And in the struggle
against petitbourgeois consciousness, one then must always be guided
by the powerful maxim: know thy space. We must define our social spaces.
All space must be conquered but occupation should be determined by
the balance of spatial forces. Mao’s principles on protracted war
still hold universal. But in the case of the petitbourgeois trapped
in the false attraction of Starbucks, encirclement may not be the
correct stratagem. What becomes urgent is to decaffeinate the mind.
I therefore recommend the rather simplistic approach of the snob—neglection.
Forget Starbucks. Ignore Starbucks. Avoid Starbucks. Coffee is good
but it is better to preserve cash.
“If I neglect you one more day, will you go away?”
From the poem ‘Detect the Neglection’
Epilogue: Last July 4, the strike of Rustan’s employees went three
months old. The employees protested about low wages, lack of benefits,
and management’s refusal to recognize their union. The owners of Rustan’s
hold exclusive franchise over Starbucks Coffee.
