Neoterra is an online magazine on politics, culture, literature, and social issues, among other things. Articles, essays, op-eds, and interviews will be featured along with fiction and poetry contributed by readers. Anyone from any corner of the world can submit and post their poems and micro-fiction.

To submit yours, e-mail me at: flipnautick@yahoo.com

Article Submission-Topics:

Cultural Studies
Western and Eastern philosophy
Ethnic/Race-relations issues
Film studies, film theory
Arts and Literature: art theory and history, aesthetics, comparative literature, performance/dramatic arts, poetry, music
Women’s studies, feminist theory
Political Issues
Mass media and popular culture
Environmental Issues
Urban history, Urban Socioeconomics
Micropolitics: public and community service, grass-roots political movements.
Book reviews, film reviews

E-mail: flipnautick@yahoo.com

Sorry, that I cannot pay you, but you can always use your publication with Neoterra Magazine as a reference on your resume when submitting writings to other publications.

Contribute Your Poems And Short Short-Stories

I have a new literary site which I’m trying to grow. It’s a site where poems and micro-fiction (short short-stories) from contributors will be posted. Hopefully the site will grow large enough to gain more traffic so that the writers who contribute will have a global audience, but for now I’m just looking for writers willing to submit their work for the love of writing. I will include a short bio of yourself and links to any websites you have. Check out the guidelines at the website:

Thanks guys!

www.xanga.com/flipnautick

I’m about to light this world on fire.

www.xanga.com/flipnautick

I remember December two years ago, in the Philippines, walking alone in the busy streets at night–noisy and cool. Going to the mall because I didn’t know where else I should go, or could be. I remember watching Wicker Park, which was a remake of L’Appartement and that movie is a fragment of that memory which sticks out for some reason, maybe because of the story line: guy-meets-girl, girl walks away from his life mysteriously, guy and girl reunites at the end again. And I remember as I was watching it, I thought to myself how alienated I felt from everyone and everything around me. Then I remember taking a ride back home alone while this couple was making out next to me. I always thought in the back of my mind that that was the reason I ended up in the Philippines, was to find someone. Maybe one day while taking photographs of the city, fate would push her into a frame a millisecond before the flash. But I found no one, except maybe myself in the most existentialist-Freudian sense. I listened to a band called Rivermaya, this popular (actually iconic, especially now that they finally broke up) alternative-rock band over there, and there was this one song called Balisong that was like the soundtrack for that season and time. You know how you have those songs that cannot be helped but be linked to certain memories, or events along the timeline of your life? “Your face, lights the sky on the highway…” it started out. I also remember every morning for a week, leading up to Christmas Day, Filipinos went to church at 4 in the morning and the whole town would make their way to the old large Spanish basilica behind my house. I wasn’t very religious back then, in fact at that time I wanted to reject religion in general, but I went for my aunt and we would walk, her beautifully dressed–her arm locked in mine, the way gentlemen back in the day escorted ladies as they strolled down the street on Sunday afternoons, actually all I needed was a tophat and a cane and I would have completed the idyllic picture. After the mass we would walk to the bakery to buy freshly baked bread still very warm as mounds of it piled on top of each other inside a large brown bag. It was so good that you can eat it plain and it would make your day. Even something as simple as bread is so vivid in my memory. I don’t miss those days and nights though…they were just like any other fragments of memories that make up my life and who I am.

Sitting in my usual spot in Borders (bookstore), between the Psychology and Social Sciences section, I observed a trend while (trying) to read this book about cybernetics. I noticed that many many people flock towards the ‘Sex’ category of the Psychology section. I saw one lady who looked to be in her upper-40s browsing through the pages of this enormous sex-position-and-then-some book, or rather “textbok”. There’s nothing absolutely wrong with this of course, but it seems like more people are either A: having trouble getting laid, or B: couples having trouble getting freaky in the sheets, which may, or may not imply relationship problems. Maybe, more people nowadays are stressed and alienated from each other, even between couples and spouses. I don’t know, it’s just a thought that I came to while observing this.

Another popular subject among readers is the Occult, or “New Age”. I think the famous psychic Sylvia Browne, the old lady with the harsh voice that has her own weekly segment on Montel, sells more books than Stephen King. I mean, her books fly off the shelf faster than she makes them, and trust me she has made tons of books about the paranormal and everything psychic. What does this tell me about people nowadays? Maybe, the same implications as with the sex-help readers: anxiety, stress, alienation. I mean, think about it, people who are interested in things like the supernatural are people actually looking for proof of the existence of an afterlife. People seek ghosts to be assured that death is not actually the end, and that one day they will reunite with their loved-ones who passed away.

Oh Borders, how I love thee!

“Searching For God on Highway 59″

Lights flickered throughout the freeway,

Like distant galaxies we can only spot

With squinted eyes from the Earth.

Imagining that I can shoot my soul

Into lamp-posts and tail-lights,

As if it held the light of heaven

Underneath its red plastic casing.

But I’ve seen men chase after God,

With heroin in their system.

And I’ve seen men slaughter each other,

Because they think it’s the fastest

Way to get Him.

Please excuse my eyes, they sometimes

Lead me astray,

Like a mosquito blindly flying

Into a zapper.

-Michael “Ron” Mira

I was a bit down about something, nothing serious really, now that I look back at it. But the funny thing was that it was something I wrote a while back that gave me a boost. I really should start listening to myself: “I feel like I’m growing more as a person. I’m learning to adapt and adjust. I see so many people I know get so caught up in their dreams that when it doesn’t work out they get all depressed and stay in the same path. People stickin’ to Option A and then Option A dont’ work, so then some great unknown force in the universe gives us Option B which isn’t as good as Option A but good enough…but some people are so ignorant that they don’t see blessings given to them, new dreams, new paths…some people are so caught up in their own illusions that when they hit a dead-end, they don’t even think about going in another direction. I mean I got dreams too, big ones, but I’m also a realist, and I learn to adjust and when I do that, I end up going on a good path. Let go mannnn, just let go and move on…move forward.”

I know I’m supposed to be keeping up with my responsibilites. Right now, I’m not where I’m supposed to be. But who’s to say where I belong? It’s my life. I do what feels right to me. I’m young and I have all these ambitions, but at the same time I know how to enjoy life like a cup of expensive Parisian coffee. I’m very passive and calm in my approach on life, and at the same time driven. I used to be either at one end of the extremes, but now that I’m much older, I’ve learned to balance, or rather, I learned how to fuse and melt different philosophies into my own ‘way of living’. I know I won’t get to do all of the things I planned of doing. Or rather, some of my dreams will fail while others flourish. It’s okay though, because I’ve always been a juggler when it comes to experiences. After all, the experience is what really counts in life…to me at least.

It seems that all my escape routes

End up in my imagination,

And this would be nice

If I weren’t running from the fire.

I keep going though,

Because maybe the mind-over-matter thing

Will actually work and I won’t feel the burn.

But it’s no use; I was never really good at dreaming.