I was actually very amused by our little attempt to emulate the incredibly cool hologram personalities made famous by the Halalan 2010 coverage. It isn’t the most spectacular thing in the world, but it made me stop and smile for about 43 seconds before I got bored and walked away..

The Philippines: Where Low-Rent Ripoffs Happen.

Don’t be someone whose life revolves around Zara sales and internet porn and comic books and fastfood pizza and bottomless Tang Strawberry Juice.

Don’t be helpless and impotent and indifferent in the face of real social issues.

Be like Zarah.

Be someone who cares enough to step outside of the trappings of the corporate world to do more than donate funds to faceless charities.

Be someone who spends her Saturdays actually immersed in the Bayan ni Juan community located in far-flung Calauan, Laguna to do developmental work with the kids who live there. There are thousands of them, mostly relocatees from the Typhoon Ondoy calamity, and have owned even less in their lifetimes than some of us more fortunate people  have spent on clothes and bags and Starbucks coffee in one day. They are the poorest of the poor, the ones who get swept under the rug when progress calls.

Zarah gives them everything she has to give. She reads them stories. She teaches them songs of hope. She coaches them through their dance routines. She teaches them value formation. She laughs with them, she plays with them, she chases them out of despair and desolation. She’s a saint to them, and they love her incredibly.

Even if she can be a machine-gun-toting bad-ass sometimes..

As do I. I just stand on the sidelines and help carry stuff and treat the kids to piggybacks and play basketball with them on their rudimentary street courts. But I marvel at the selflessness and soul and strength and spirit that she finds within herself to share so much to these people, even as she lives her weekday life as a full-time mommy and corporate prodigy.

We try to go there every Saturday. It’s hot, dirty, sweaty work, but we love it incredibly. We always go home smelling of soil and filth, but with huge smiles on our faces and our hearts as light as jazz.

But I wish I could do more.

One thing these kids haven’t got is a school. Zarah’s dream, which she shares with her partners in her development work, is to fund a mobile school for them, which will be run by Salesians of Don Bosco. It will cost PhP2-million, which is a lofty dream for one person to bring to life, but not for ten, a hundred, a thousand good souls working together.

These kids have been stuck in generations of poverty. But they never stop hoping and dreaming of elevation. This is one concrete way that they can escape the downtrodden cycle they have navigated thus far.

Can you help?

Contact Zarah Hernaez, +63 928 304 2367.

And watch this video. These are the faces behind the hope that we feel.

Be a Superstar and help fight for the future.

(And yes, that’s Zarah singing. She’s amazing.)

He was not a particularly handsome or talented or wealthy Superstar. In fact, as far as Superstars go, he probably fell on the lower end of the spectrum – cute enough but not heart-stoppingly so, amusing enough but not outright funny, pleasant enough but not distinguishedly sweet. He was an intersection of kind-of’s and sort-of’s, a nondescript middle ground halfway down the highway to superlative.

He was gifted with one special gift though: an ego as robust and swollen as a ripe watermelon slightly past its prime. He carried himself with a swagger, determined to achieve through sheer force of character what he could not achieve through more overt physical charms. That was all he had, after all, but it was something he carried in spades: a shamelessly invincible sense of self-worth that allowed him to steamroll people into believing he was, in fact, Super.

What people did not realize though was that hidden behind the bluster and bravado of his Superstar nom-de-plume, was the soul of a tiny, scared, insecure little boy, closer to the emotional fortitude of a 6-year-old than his 29 year-old physique, with strapping 18-inch biceps and scruffy biker’s goatee, would suggest.

He was scared.

He was fake.

And he was lonely.

And then, one day, this Superstar met a Girl.

This girl had eyes that seemed to be woven of liquid smoke, deeply entrancing and heavy with both mystery and promise. She had a way of gazing into the eyes of the Superstar, and stripping away the layers of swagger and bluster he had painstakingly forged for himself through years of shame and insecurity.

“Be true to yourself, Superstar,” she would whisper. “Be the man you know yourself to sincerely be.”

And just like that, she stirred a yearning within the trembling fraud Superstar. “I will be honest,” he whispered back. “For you, I will be true.”

And into the sunlight, the Superstar stepped forth. “It’s better to be true-per than Super,” he chuckled to himself, shaking his head slyly over his clumsy pun. Away came the swagger. Away dropped the fraud. Away fell the desire to impress with facade.

And the Superstar swore to the Girl With The Eyes of Liquid Smoke that he would no longer be selfish and self-centered and aloof and withdrawn. He would look outwards with her, accept the beauty of a world embroidered with love, and embrace a life of Spice Girls-inspired “2 Become 1″-ness.

And he knew that beside her was where he wanted to be. Beside her was where he was the happiest. Beside her was where he could learn to be brave and strong and true.

Beside her was where he was made to be.

Beside the Girl With The Eyes of Liquid Smoke.

Just how bad?

The single decent shot I took came completely by accident, when I hit the shutter button while attempting to discreetly pick my nose, before I even got to aim. Irritating! The resultant shot looked like something chic and posh and very urban.. like the 2011 Spring/Summer catalog of Bunny Jeans, or quite possible the latest print spread by Freego in Women’s Home Companion magazine..

I did, however, manage to reassure myself that I possess a singularly awesome talent that remains unrivaled in at least 48 American states, and 83% of Northern Luzon precincts – I can weigh an ungodly 230-lbs, yet put on a horizontally-striped shirt and still look as sleek and svelte and agile as if I weighed just 218..

Yes. I truly am a Superstar..

*****

All shots taken at Oh My Gulay, 5/F La Azotea Building, Session Road, Baguio City. All clothing and accessories, unless otherwise indicated, are models’ own, and are assuredly obscenely expensive.

The peanut’s a legume
It’s cute and it’s small
How did something so tiny
Make me stumble and fall?

Tagged: Chuck Taylors, Converse, legume, peanut, poetry ]]> http://mdjsuperstar.com/2010/08/11/ode-to-a-peanut/feed/ 0 MDJ Superstar Peanut