Fundi and Kent

Reflecting on drinking alcohol, Fundi, is the street name of the Pedro Domecq brandy Fundador favored by my peers for special occasions. Kent is the cigarette at Duty Free Korea bold enough to print in big letters: SMOKING KILLS!

In a class I taught not too long ago, I told a student born in Jamaica that ganja grew abundantly on the Blue Mountains as it also did among the forest trees south of Lagos, Nigeria. The “Jamaica” girl told her Mom, and I was castigated for speaking with authority to encourage young minds to inhale the common weed profusely growing in many backyards on Saipan!

Retired pedagogue Ambrose probably joins me on psychotropic THC as preferable to the nicotine, carbon monoxide, and tar of Virginia’s leaf. I actually prefer neither as both lead to dependencies, but were I to choose on the matter on legal policy, I will most likely decriminalize the former and raise extreme caution on the effect of the latter.

For almost two weeks, I roasted my throat on Kent’s heated air; I went to sleep early on Fundi’s alcohol-induced ennui, “fun at the fridge door,” or, fundador, got it? Two bottles later, with daily fluid intake dragging Kent’s fumes, it turned to an “addiction.” I tried shaking off both, and I was successful on the alcohol until my “partner” in China showed up bearing two Chinese brandy gifts rating mas 0 menos 50 percent APV. I took a swig and my afternoon nap went quietly and “nicely.” One bottle came with two cupitas. At least, I sipped slowly rather than glugged as soon as the Vesper bells rang.

Brandy Xinghuacun of Shanxi and Laolongkuo of Shenyang provided more than a cupita before I called it a night. Addiction is, of course, not a subject of discourse among many, something kept under covers, or camouflaged with enough after-shave lotion and talc, save Greg Borja at NMPASI who will not hesitate to say that he marches on the 12 steps. The French invented eau du perfum because the winters were long and there was not enough hot water to go around! But the cover-up is not the issue, the addiction is.

Neuro-addiction from tobacco and alcohol is common, and easy to develop. My brandy-bearing Dong Bei associate chain-smokes and buys low tar cigarettes to cut down on nicotine and tar, but anxiously lights up one after the other consuming two packs a day easy. He is 25. The low tar might salve the conscience, but smoking is smoking; tar remains dirty, the carbon monoxide affects climate change, and nicotine still laces addiction.

In the quietude of my dwelling where I was reduced to doing laundry, cleaning the house, and hacking on a byline, I had my fifth cup of coffee by midday, and at the same time for the first time, also reached for a bottle of San Mig. First, it was liberating to do that. There were no confining rules that said I could not do it. On the other hand, shortly after midday, I was ready to take a nap. The physiological addiction was not significant compared to the mental one.

CNMI indigenous folks form a social hierarchy the same way as Carolinian gradations follow Satawal society. Knowledge is learned from navigators who face variables in the high seas, so not all get to learn the guarded knowledge. A lot of taboo go with sailing practices (e.g., women are not allowed to be sea farers), with a few still useful, others, best forgotten or ignored. Traditional wisdom begets illusions of social superiority.

The focus on navigation is hierarchical. The elite in the social structure navigates and spawns a mental exclusivity, a well-regarded status position. Knowledge is protected closely as only a few get to look at the constellation and transect the south and north stars, the main guides to the direct sea way between Satawal via Saipan to Japan.

Volcanic Pagan is considered ancestral land, the mystique of its black sands a sacred experience of life and death, at once mineral rich and deadly but the island, as public land, is subject to arrangements by the United States that wants to use it for military training purposes. Coconut crabs and deer outnumber islanders, but the politics of “strategic military location” considers China as a threat.

It dominates the thinking of the Pentagon across the Potomac.

This mental fixation of containing China is not valid. The U.S. fixation to lead the world as heir to the “sun never sets on the British Empire” of the uppity Brits, to police the world, is not an option. It reveals pettiness and arrogance.

Indigenes in the Marianas are addicted to Uncle Sam’s dole. Unused to being imperials, Custer’s U.S. soldiers hurried to tropical Samar wearing wool. Chinese PLAs slept on down jackets and wore dry socks and sneakers in Korea while GI Joe trod on boots that easily caused frostbites; layers of polyester froze the sweat, not a very smart move. A friend sits on real estate worth millions but he positions himself as a poor recipient of Uncle Sam’s dole, a habit hard to break.

Addictions. I know mine. Do you know yours?