Reading Marxism has made me aware that a “Basic Disequilibrium” in a capitalist society like ours is necessary for it to run. Be it a matter of individual choice, biological qualification or being just there historically, being in those positions makes certain things possible for one that are not possible for others.

The PROLETARIATS are class of laborers who live only so long as they find work and as long as their labor increases capital—in short they are a Commodity. While I am not necessarily working, I am a proletariat in a sense that I serve and function acceding to the Capitalists’ interests.

In terms of economic aspect, capitalists are nestling everywhere, establishing connections here and there. Thus for sure I am much subjected to their interests. As the capitalists constantly modernize their instruments of production so am I caught for the demands of having the latest model of phones, mp3, ipods. It is creating a social whirl that sucks everyone, whether we like it or not.

Just as the proletariats are kept alive by the capitalists for their subsistence, my aspirations in my life is also perhaps a product of an Ideology created by the capitalists.

Taking up English course makes me aware that literature ever since was determined by economics discreetly translated into cultural limitations. One of which is on the dependence of my works being read to what kind and what my readers inherit from schooling, like if they can understand the language one is using.

Literature, then, is part of any culture’s superstructure and in a way participates in the articulation of forms a certain ideology as it can justify or attack religious and political beliefs or aesthetic ideas. This explicates why literature is much harder than the music. Literature requires education.

Because the labor of an individual has a socially a twofold character (it must satisfy a definite social want and the wants of the producer)—this validates the high demand for nursing. While I am not caught to it, of what will I become after finishing a “capitalist-interest-participative” course,  is also in itself an outcome bent by the capitalists.

How is it so? The less the period of training the work requires, the smaller will be the cost of production of the worker and the lower will be the price of his labor—his wages. Seeing this rule of labor, to be a lawyer is justified for still schooling another four years and such is also a profession turned into wage-laborers by the capitalists.

The proletariat is the only substantial human creator of wealth—the capitalist’s wealth I say, but then proletariat is by no means limited to manual labor in industry. In Val Burris’ CLASS STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, most Marxists today recognize the existence in an advanced capitalist society of a significant group of people who cannot be included in the working class, even though they work for a salary or wage. Various names have been applied to this group—“new middle class” or the petty bourgeoisie as discussed.

I identify myself as a proletariat now but yet what I am aiming in life is to become a petty bourgeoisie—all this is because of the capitalist’s spin. 

Marx identifies this third class as those who do not sell their labor power directly, but provide services (for the laborers and the capitalists) such as merchants, doctors, teachers, etc. and who identify themselves with the capitalists and uphold their interests.  These strata make up an in-between group among the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, sharing characteristics with both.They share with the proletariat the characteristic of being a class that owns no means of production and is compelled to sell its labor power to the capitalists in order to live. At the same time they also share with the capitalist from a separation from manual labor, which has been delegated almost exclusively to the proletariat. Marx saw these people swept away by the march of capitalism, such as family farms being replaced by agribusiness, or many small stores run by their owners being replaced by a supermarket, and so forth.

(As most of the Marxists argue) Culture does the job of keeping us all in line, thus I now identify the restraints that hold me back is conditioned by a particular development of one’s productive forces. That is to say a proletariat dealt in a proletariat way.

Thus being in this class, I am inflicted with stress- induced activities, television programs that are gas up by capitalists and be affected with the rising price of commodities. Just as my Church justifies the hierarchical structure of society, by obedience to one’s master and subordination would be rewarded after life, I am certainly thinking and acting as if I was perfectly free while unconsciously acceding to all sorts of regimen that betoken my obedience and submission. Hence, The Magic of Ideology—to make us do things that may be against our interests and to do them entirely self-willed. Naming some is the Catholic School where I was reared up and the idea of Morality as taught in the family, which was not really because one is simply conformist in a sense; all of this serves a greater purpose which disguises or hides the “objective” reality of the capitalists’ interests.

Marxist theory is directed at social change and it illuminates the destructive potential of capitalism. On coming to the end I cannot say that I am a Marxist in a fuller sense for that will certainly mean me wanting the humanity to face barbarism. But then I acknowledge that imbalance. Life is just unfair and it’s all in the person how to deal with it. Knowing your Marxism won’t hurt, but totally conforming to it is an another matter—a big one.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you in the crowd.” Diego said to her. She was a small woman and her hair was cut short; her beauty radiant even in anger.

“You always do this to me, I’m fed up.” She struggled to close her luggage, forcing her clothes in. “We cannot be always like this. You need to learn, that’s why I’m leaving.”

“No you cannot, you’re mine and mine alone.” Diego said while closing the door with an ominous thud.

The following day, Diego calmly told his Tatay that Martha ran away with the church’s sacristan. It was the last of what they heard about Martha.

“Tia didn’t leave behind much, right? Just some empty rooms…” The boy scratched his nose. Diego snapped the reins hard and the boy was pushed backward. The passengers said nothing.

Lolo wiped his spectacles after trying to repair it for the past hour. His weight rested fitfully on the antique bed.

Sunlight fell across the wooden table of the room; loneliness shone through it and onto each other.

“So how long have you been hiding this?” He asked.

Lola pursed her lips and hacked as if to clear her throat of cobwebs or of soot. “I kept it…because your glasses were broken.”

Lolo stood up and walked towards the table. The noise made by the rotting wood of the bed sounded like cries he long held in his chest. From the mirror, she noticed how sunken his eyes had become and how withered the skin of his neck hung over his collar. Her skin too, had grown sallow and she had become too thin. Time has run through them.

“It’s not nice of you…” Lolo said while running his fingers through the decorative ridges of their son’s picture frame. “Of you and Antonio, my kababata.”

“You’d have to forgive me.” She stood up and took the frame from Lolo’s hands. “Antonio and I did a mistake long ago. Our Son is out of this.” She put it back on the wooden table, its glass facing the window.

It reflected the sun, intermittently showing Lolo’s tears.

“Antonio has paid the price. We can get through if we just live with it. I am sorry.” She grasped Lolo’s hand but he could not grasp back.

Lolo turned around her and with his warm breath beneath her ear, he said, “lying damned the angels below.”

Lolo put on his glasses and pulled the cotton curtains together.

Lolo wiped his spectacles after trying to repair it for the past hour. His weight rested fitfully on the antique bed.

Sunlight fell across the wooden table of the room; loneliness shone through it and onto each other.

“So how long have you been hiding this?” He asked.

Lola pursed her lips and hacked as if to clear her throat of cobwebs or of soot. “I kept it…because your glasses were broken.”

Lolo stood up and walked towards the table. The noise made by the rotting wood of the bed sounded like cries he long held in his chest. From the mirror, she noticed how sunken his eyes had become and how withered the skin of his neck hung over his collar. Her skin too, had grown sallow and she had become too thin. Time has run through them.

“It’s not nice of you…” Lolo said while running his fingers through the decorative ridges of their son’s picture frame. “Of you and Antonio, my kababata.”

“You’d have to forgive me.” She stood up and took the frame from Lolo’s hands. “Antonio and I did a mistake long ago. Our Son is out of this.” She put it back on the wooden table, its glass facing the window.

It reflected the sun, intermittently showing Lolo’s tears.

“Antonio has paid the price. We can get through if we just live with it. I am sorry.” She grasped Lolo’s hand but he could not grasp back.

Lolo turned around her and with his warm breath beneath her ear, he said, “lying damned the angels below.”

Lolo put on his glasses and pulled the cotton curtains together.

Mama bore me with a furious mole on my cheek that swells everytime I grin. And I never got a good scent of lotion for my scale skin. Maybe that is why my classmates never shared a table with me. I sometimes think that it was because of my high mental capabilities (mama taught me that) that I’d get a chewed gum on my skirt or get a gift of worms on kris kringles. Well, as you see that’s more of the sad part of my life. But I do have fun too.

Down our ancestral house a trail I made myself leads to a river that suffers much from the summer drought. It is so shrunken that I’d see Papa fishes and baby fishes lay lifeless on the gravel of its bed. It’s amazing though that I could count them. I’d remove my shoes and follow them as they increase in numbers. Sometimes the big stones are so hot that I’d instead walk along to its shore. I’d do this when I’d miss my Papa or when I become sad or when my mama wants me to wash dishes. I get an inexplicable relief by walking away to things that I don’t want to feel.

One day, Papa’s secretary called to tell my mama that Papa is extending his business trip and could not make it to my recital. Papa then sent me a self-redemption-gift wrapped in a green box which I didn’t open.

Instead, I ran down to the lifeless river as if I swam it. It seemed to me that both my feet wanted to outrun each other. Upon reaching to my breathe’s end, I didn’t shout. I just got tired. And I sat down, leaning my back underneath this rough, gray, shriveling tree.

I finally inhaled myself and I was ready to look at anything yet was actually to lazy to see anything when I noticed a figure leaning towards me.

“Hello Molly.”

“I’m Karen.”

“Yeah.” The dead leaves crunched as he placed himself beside me.

“Did it ever seem to you that you needed a friend?”

“Why?”

He was just an ordinary school boy among all the guys. He’d come late on school programs, had at least a one nobody girlfriend and eats sandwich for recess.

“I want you to be my friend.” But before I could ask him again why, I have found ourselves already comfortable in talking with each other. Such was a long conversation and the first I had for a stranger, next was hello’s. Though we never really talked of something sensible, I still felt that I have known him and that it has been a long time since I did. Yet the sky turned orange and the lifeless river wanted to sleep. I told him that we have to say goodbye to each other and that night became the first night I could not sleep.

You may think that I have become completely out of my wits by thinking that all the love songs were written for me or that I could possibly write more sonnets that Shakespeare did. No I did not and I was not. I just combed my hair and washed the dishes that dinner.

I was expecting him to share the table with me the next day. Yes he did and asked me how far was I working in our Math workbook.

“Almost halfway.” It need not the sun for me to see his lips smile nor my eyes to see how close he leaned towards me.

“Well, maybe you could help me?”

“After class?”  What an answer I remarked to myself.

“Whenever you wish.”

And every morning he would greet me with a hello. Asked me how far I’m working and if maybe I could help him. And after class, I would patiently wait him to the withering tree. How was it possible, I asked myself, to sit and walk for an hour through the river and see nothing worthy of note, I know not why. Yet I’d honestly forgive him the next morning he holds my hand to say that: ” My mom told me to buy her medicines.” or “My little brother had a problem, I was asked to fetch him. I hope I’m still your friend?”

It was neither a “thank you” nor a “forgive me” at least for the nobility of a completed task faithfully done, however it was the most beautiful thing one could ever hear. One like me would really love.

Papa arrived one morning and apologized to me for not having enough time to make it to my ballet show. “You don’t have to be sorry. I was kinda expecting it.”

I rushed to the school that day thinking thet he would be waiting on the table or to our classroom. But I couldn’t even see his bag hang on his chair. I had this intution that he can possibly be on the river waiting for me. And so I removed my shoes and ran as fast as I could and thought of the Papa fishes and baby fishes I count. Instead, to my dismay, I found him with an another girl underneath that withering tree.

The following day appeared empty to me and all I could see is him smiling and leaning towards me.

“Hello Molly.” I looked up helplessly on his beautiful face.”What’s the matter?”

“I like you. Why?”

“What are you saying?”

“I saw you.”

“Look your’e not even cute.” Remembering something. “Wait, who says I can’t be with somebody else anyway?”

“I came for you there.”

“I never came for you there, Karen.”

I opened the green box and found a new ballet flats and a video cam with an attached note that reads: Hello karen, tape the best day of your life. I’m always here for you. Dad

I wanted to think that you never had me at hello, but you did.

That night, to my bedroom, and all the things that mattered to me, my father and I talked.

Her white hair rivaled the color of her skin as she walked outside. The figure she made casted shadows through the windows then inside the room that she did not notice. For she rather chose to push her small hands against the wide door and see what is inside. A ray of dusts seemed to fly towards the bright sun and illuminated outlines of what she could see.

She lifted her head high and imagined more rays of light surrounding her, but creating a shadow upon her. It came back that instance.

“It feels good to leap high and finish the course smoothly.”

She arched down her eyes and saw a long bar which she easily jumped over and the falling tap of horseshoes motioned the greater applause. It was triumph.

“But not when I finally know that my stable are underground shades and I can’t really gallop to walls.”

For in her own arena, she modestly earns existence only in the triumph that she and her sturdy ally makes. Their impeccable springs to air, are all that the people wanted to see of them.

“Every fall to the ground, brusies and scratches, breaks to my neck. These are the things I only see.”

I didn’t mind at first our house to be small, after all who would want to be with an overbearing grandma? Being with her is worse than sleeping three on a king size bed with a swooning pink wallpaint. Despite the coziness, we would still squeeze for room and this intimacy heightens during dawn. We have three wide windows adjacent to each other and the left three opens to our lawn that grows an impotent rambutan tree and various ferns and herbages I’m not acquainted of.

Well, as you see, I stay most of the time in the room because our living room faces east and west at the same time. It’s literally where the sun rises and falls.Thus, because of this grilling heat, I uncovered the mystery of why the former tenants of our flat packed up.

Everyone calls her Manang Tina for she is an Institution. However we see her not lead the Senior Citizen’s League because she’s still 63 (she says so) abd uphold that old age is a fine guardian of chastity that will not make his limping husband, Pido, a cuckold.

I first met her peering to their gate and telling that I’m pretty, well that made me smile although everbody does says so. But it crapped me out seconds later when she started talking to my father how teenagers sneak out uncaught 2am in the morning and trick parents with some lousy project-work on weekends. I once overheard her too, screaming late at night to her granddaughter: “Ha! Nganong kana man ang imong g-suot?” (Why are you wearing that?)

“You’d someday become a slut you are so bent on becoming!” And I just thought of doing something better, reading Kincaid’s girl.

For it is plain to see that the special token of old age is the love to their once-upon-a-young- marvellous tales. So I’d get a piece of Manang Tina’s Literature in her 5c elementary days’ baon stories, fried eggplant and salted ampalaya recipe poems and a wonderful essay of how-hard-was-life-then-not-like-now.

I don’t want to hate her, but the sound of her voice resonates like demons unto the lengths of my bed.

It does not require me to peek through our window to see if her grandchildren had arrived. All you need to do was like, to stay for one and half month and all things becomes routinary. Take it from me. They come 11:30 on a Saturday evening in their rustic white L300 van with 3-beat honk. Save for that it would not rain, or Manang Tina would go crazy yelling just to let not a single drop of rain hurt her helpless “apos”. Then, it’s customary. Starts with the gates banging, stilletoes walking, screen-doors slamming and Manang Tina’s shouting. (And it’s even worst than Gwen Stefani ululating!)

There was however a one night when the orchestra had a new accompaniment. A brown- pawed white puppy snorting and snuffling like walrus. Poor thing, became as the perfect object of Manang Tina’s domestic violence.

I would want to believe that newspaper boys don’t bike to Manang Tina’s house, for as what I’ve heard, it sorely bothers her why puppies piss on their doorwalk and not on the canal, why puppies pee on corners and not on the canal and why puppies need to bark when they see strangers and not just shut up and sit, lie down and roll.

For every bones that dad gives to Part after we have left him alone all day, the poor puppy receives a smack of the broomstick’s edge on its head for sleeping on their doormat. And even his hobbling husband joins her frenzy too. He would painstakingly bend to reach for his rubber slippers to throw it to the puppy for sniffing his favorite sneakers. A perfect soprano for the symphony, isn’t it?

I attempted to see this pup and give him a nice, warm big hug for all the week’s horrible experiences. It was a hot sunday afternoon and I looked to see if someone’s on their garden. The puppy barked at me, but when I sat on my knees showing the bitten hotdog on my hands, he changed his mind and started tiptoeing towards me. He was almost there to me, wagging his brown tail when the front door opened and Manang Tina in a floral printed duster with a crosstitch on her left hand stamped her feet to scare the puppy away.

“Be careful. it bites.”

It seemed to me that her eyes turned white and her lips lost it’s figure. I swallowed hard and went away to see if our mailbox’ flag turned red.