Now/here no/where woman

Owl crashed into their drinking session and probably sent them all screaming and scampering away. Maybe the carwash boys were too drunk to see that this was an animal spirit come to take its share of the gin. Or maybe they weren't drunk enough. Owl just stood there, stunned, one eye shut. They captured Owl and put it in a laundry basket. They thought maybe it was sick. They also thought maybe they could sell it and make a little extra money. This must have been the Owl we could hear almost every night in our neighbourhood. All my life in my childhood home, I could hear owl calls. I only ever caught a glimpse of an owl once. Now here was an owl in a laundry basket in a carwash down the street. We bought Owl's freedom from the carwash boys for P500. They let us take the laundry basket. We kept owl for a day and a night, watching for signs of illness, injury or strength. Owl kept one eye shut the first day. Owl blinked at us with one dark eye ringed with brilliant orange. ...

For a Five-Year-Old A snail is climbing up the window sill into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see it, and I explain that it would be unkind to leave it there. It might crawl to the floor; we must take care that no one squashes it. You understand, and carry it outside, with careful hand, to eat a daffodil. I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails: Your gentleness is moulded still by words from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds, from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed your closest relatives, and who purveyed the harshest kind of truth to many another. But that is how things are: I am your mother, and we are kind to snails. FLEUR ADCOCK I love this poem more than ever now. I think I must have lived its truth over and over as nanay to the Artist-in-Residence and the Little Big Boss.

I have a love-hate relationship with this weather, but it couldn't care less how I feel. This rain, the oppressive grey sky -- they make me restless. They make me want to run away from home. But the sound of the rain and the wind in the swaying bamboo says, "Stay. Stay. Stay awhile longer." I have a love-hate relationship with this weather, but it couldn't care less how I feel.

"None of the above and/or All of the above. It's the all-inclusive, non-conclusive Answer!" *Mr. Camote is our resident sweet potato head who holds a PhD in the anthropology of matter that matters.  His research interests include food, mediation and translation of academic language, and the culture of tubers. He currently lives in the kitchen.

About a hundred years ago, Filipino women couldn't vote. Only men could cast votes in Philippine elections. Men were making choices and electing into office other men whose decisions would impact on the lives of men, women and children alike. And women didn't have a say in this -- at least not officially. Today, not only can we vote, we have women in senate and in congress. We have women governing our provinces, cities and barangays. Two female presidents so far. Maybe not all of these women improved the lives of the majority of Filipino women. But each of them represents widening possibilities for women's leadership and participation in politics. They are part of a chain of historical transformations in the Philippines, beginning with the women's right to vote. The great-grandmothers of my generation worked hard to make this happen. They campaigned around the country, rallied the women, convinced husbands, debated and negotiated with gatekeepers and the powers...

At a Women's Month celebration the other day, I was seated with the Little Boss on my lap and her Papa, my Outrigger, stood behind us, ready to take her if needed. A woman I hold much respect for, a senior in academic circles, came up to me and commented on how the Little Boss has grown and I introduced her to the Outrigger. She smiled at him and said in a tone that I heard to be partly scolding, partly teasing,  "You're the one who's keeping her from being an anthropologist!" He and I responded in unison, "Noooo." But she had turned and walked away. I suppose she had said what she wanted to say and didn't need or want to hear an answer. The Outrigger shrugged and said, "Some people just feel they have to say something." And with that shrug, I knew that the Outrigger had already brushed aside that brief encounter and was just minutes away from forgetting the whole incident -- a gift I wish I had too. But I was bothered, and he...

Wanting More and More to Live Unobserved, Unobserving Wanting more and more to live unobserved, unobserving, like a dog who takes the bone and goes to another room where it just fits under the low-legged table or couch. In the farthest depths, no sunlight reaches. Yet certain fish, now eyeless, streak with luminescence when excited; a lowered bathysphere turns on a floodlight and is mobbed, the strange-formed bodies drawing in for miles. No one was ever meant to see this. Certainly not the fish, who see nothing, whose tentacles travel the cold light, and no one knows how or why. Like human beings to a mystery they imagine feels some passion for their fate. And the dog? Fallen into the marrow-pleasure completely. Jane Hirshfield.