Repost: Of Love and Moving On

Of Love and Moving on
by Joscar Malacaman
First Published: UP CURSOR’s Monitor February  2010
Last Edited: July 14, 2011

“When it comes, just grab it with both hands and never let go.”

This is going to be the seventh time that I’ve decided to rewrite this article from the top. I find it strange that a wordsmith, such as myself, can’t seem to express what he wants to say. Such is the nature of love; it is a feeling that defies words and definitions as if it has a mind of its own. I have often written about love in my poems and it is one of the most beautiful things to write about. It captures so much of human experience and emotions that just the thought of it can be enough to drive a person mad with ecstasy or despair. I asked myself, however, if was I the right person to write about love. After all, I’ve never entered a romantic relationship. It is at this point that I realized that love goes beyond relationships; it goes beyond labels and meaning. I realized that love is, indeed, undefinable.

Love transcends the different layers of human emotions; it permeates through the different phases of human experience. It’s something that’s not easy to write about because it’s different for everyone and to generalize would do love a great injustice. Such a perfect idea should not be caged in imperfect words. Love is something that should be experienced in order to be understood and even then it is only that exact experience that you’ll understand. For me, it is like poetry which is not meant to be simply read. Instead, it invites the reader to be completely immersed in its every aspect; drowning in that faint yet powerful sensory journey. With that being said, I cannot write about love in general; I can only write about my love and nothing else but that.

It would seem strange that I am having trouble writing this article just as it would seem peculiar that after 8 months, I’m still having trouble moving on. This is probably because I dislike the phrase: ‘moving on’. For me, it is the anti-thesis of love because in truth where can you move on from love. One may say that we don’t move on from love but rather we move on from the object of our love. To that I reply with a question: “Is it possible to separate the one we love from love itself?”. I say this because as I was writing about love, deep inside I knew that I was writing about a single person and no longer just the idea in general. At this point, I’d like to admit that there were many before whom I loved and I’ve moved on from those experiences albeit with great struggle. Time has been a forceful agent of this phenomenon and it would take a great love to win against Chronos, himself.

How I wish that I’m capable of such love; capable of being able to embrace the excruciating pain of loneliness (although we are never alone); of being able to spurn the compromises that time sets before us. After all, compromise is the enemy of desire which is the very essence of love. Love doesn’t compromise, it doesn’t say: “Pwede na ‘to” and thus, when we learn to compromise our love dies down but it can still be built anew. This is not necessarily, a good or bad thing but it has become a necessity in the world we live in; the same world that sought to define the undefinable; the same world which consistently tries to define love.

Yet, love is stubborn that way and even in its most painful forms, love remains beautiful and alluring if one only dared to keep their eyes on it. It is the kind of pain that allows you to smile genuinely despite the tears; like mothers smiling upon their newly born babies even though they have been literally torn. In the process of labor, they might scream and shout in pain about how much they hate their husbands and that they didn’t want this pregnancy to happen but deep inside lies that love for their child that enables them to carry on. Such pure and uncompromising love allows them to be an inch within death and still smile and laugh and remain in love.

How I wish I am also capable of such love. To love and not seek mastery over it but rather to embrace it despite its thorns and still be able to smile. For there is no love without pain. There has always been pain when love is involved because it is the greatest paradox of life. It is the finding of one’s self in another and in time they will come at odds with each other and thus, sunder the souls that are in love.

My soul has been sundered but then I’d have it no other way. This is despite the fact that I know that time will eventually get the best of me and I will grow weary yet how I desire to never be weary. Such is life’s greatest crime: to put immortal love into the hearts of fragile creatures such as us. We may never be able to do love justice but there is no shame in trying. The world will continue remind us that we must keep order and that we must love another in order to maintain that order. It is, however, in the chaos of my heart where I am closest to understanding love. It is in chaos where I find it. For the world has no hold where there are no rules and time has no hold over the eternal. I hear it whisper when there is dead silence and it bids me to tell you…

“When it comes, grab it with both hands and never let go.”

- end -

A Tale of Two Mcdo Fries Commercials

A Tale of Two Mcdo Fries Commercials
by Joscar Malacaman (The Silvered Codex, 2011)

In 2009, I saw a McDonald’s French fries commercial that made my heart smile, flutter, break, and then smile again. It opens with two children, a boy and a girl, meeting serendipitously through their mothers, who seemed to be long lost friends. The young girl shows her newfound friend a new way of eating French fries by dipping them in chocolate sundae. She then grabs his hand and leads him towards the McDonald’s play place. The commercial then flashes forward into the future where both kids have now grown-up. The girl is still holding the guy’s hand and is leading him towards the play place where she then introduces him to her husband and child. The commercial ends with the guy dipping his fries in chocolate sundae as the girl watches and smiles. This short narrative is bound together by the Eraserheads’ Ang Huling El Bimbo playing in the background while a soulful voiceover recounts the experience of meeting one’s first love again at a later point in time. It made my heart smile and broke it at the same time. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. The beauty of an undying love is almost unmatchable.

However, what I found most fascinating about this commercial is how it kept human experience at the forefront while the product serves only as a means to share that experience. The presence of McDonald’s feels incidental to the chance meeting and the chocolate sundae frames the shared experience between the two main characters. It’s refreshing to see a commercial where the product gives away the center stage to a short yet moving plot. It delivers a powerful message aside from “eat here at McDonald’s”.

The commercial presents an idealized depiction of love, which is rare in our cynical times. It depicts first love as pure and incorruptible; how it lives on in memory through time. It presents a love that does not manifest envy even when parties have moved on (although I won’t deny that the guy probably felt envious) but rather celebrates the good memories that they’ve shared. It puts love on a pedestal where it has no strings attached to it; a love with no conditions and no rules. It presents a scenario where love transcends time and yet, doesn’t seek to impose itself on reality.

However, most things change in this world and very few remain constant through time.

A couple of days ago, I saw a McDonald’s French fries commercial that made my heart smile, flutter and then break horrendously. It opens with two kids, a boy and a girl (6 or 7 years old, would be my guess), sitting in a playground, talking. The young girl asks her friend: “Girlfriend mo na ba ako?” and the young boy replies with “Ayoko nga” and then proceeds to tell his friend the tendency of girlfriends to want too many things and what hassle it would be to have one. The girl pouts and says “Gusto ko lang naman ng McDo fries eh”. The young boy’s eyes lights up as he checks his pockets and as the commercial closes we see the two holding hands while the girl clutches a small bag of McDonald’s French fries.

Yes, it made my heart smile. The beauty of a young love is almost unmatchable. As I sat on my chair, however, the smile quickly turned into a frown. I realized that love and relationships had just been commercialized and reduced to a simple business deal. The commercial failed to show how love factors in a relationship and instead focused on the fulfillment of material needs. The budding relationship stemmed from a business contract: I’ll give you fries and in return, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. It was simple yet heartbreaking; how 25 pesos was equated to something as priceless as human affections. The young boy had already foreshadowed this with his prior statement: “Demanding ang mga girlfriend. Gusto ganito. Gusto ganyan.” as if a relationship is forged only by one’s ability to match the wants of their partner.

To make matters worse, the commercial also reinforces two negative gender stereotypes: the opportunistic male and the materialistic female. The manner in which the boy’s eyes lit up upon hearing that the girl only wanted Mcdo fries depicts the man as an opportunistic viper poised to strike when it finds easy prey. He changes his plans upon hearing that the requirements to having a girlfriend weren’t that bad. If holding hands is one of the more basic manifestations of physical intimacy, then this commercial shows the beginnings of a stereotypical man taking every convenient opportunity to get inside a woman’s pants. The girl, on the other hand, reflects the notion that material gifts are the quickest way to a girl’s heart. Upon being told by the young boy of the supposed materialistic nature of girlfriends, the young girl doesn’t challenge this notion but merely lowers expectations instead. The female is still depicted as a person who is persuaded by gifts while the male is portrayed as someone who takes advantage of this. The fact that these characteristics are attributed to young children suggests that these traits come naturally and that is where the danger of stereotyping lies. No reason is necessary for their actions because it is portrayed as natural and should therefore be accepted. The commercial, consciously or unconsciously, hides these stereotypes behind a layer of sweetness and cuteness.

These two commercials deal with more or less the same subject matter in both their theme and their product. Both are McDonald’s French fries commercials which tackle the intricacies of young love. It is clear, however, that they both handle the subject matter differently. The 2009 commercial romanticizes young love while the latter one commercializes it. A certain level of power should be attributed to commercials since they’re designed to sell something and are therefore appealing to its audiences. The issue here is that with the products they sell come the values which these commercials espouse. Commercials are usually good signs of the times since they should reflect the values of their target societies. If that is the case, the concept of love and relationships must have deteriorated over the past two years as reflected by these two Mcdonald’s commercials.

Of course, there is the chance that I am guilty of over-reading and over-analyzing these commercials. However, if we analyze the messages we are sending then we are doomed to create a cycle of ignorance in our society. If we keep on ignoring the little things, then we are forced to face them when these issues have grown in size and momentum. I’m not saying that this is the only commercial that is guilty of stereotyping and commercializing love (there are worse offenders) but because this commercial is cute and sweet, it is all the more dangerous. Layers of meaning lie behind this sugary façade and they are being dismissed as petty issues. If the devil is in the details, then surely the details are worth a second look. If the transition between these two commercials is part of the signs of our time, then we must indeed be alarmed lest we go out without so much as a whimper but rather immersed in sugary laughter.