Iti likud dagiti isem ken paggaak
iti likud dagiti adu pay a panagtalakiaw
dagiti managbabain nga ar-araraw
iti naladaw a rabii
a dagiti buto
a dagiti lateg
a dagiti batillog
a dagiti lukdit
a dagiti kaper
a dagiti lusngit
ket manglanglangan iti inaldaw-aldaw a segga
ken binigat a panaguttog
iti apagmurmuray nga idda
aldaw a kaatag dagiti nagabuyo
a panagalimpatok dagiti kamkamaten
a panagal-al ti nargaan nga agsapa
iti laksid dagiti amin a panagkari
a dinto agibit
a kas pimpiman
kas iti panagsaning-i
iti pannakakugit ti buto
iti pannakakugit ti puso
iti pannakakugit ti pus-ong
aganug-og
nga agtagubba
nga agulang-ulang iti paraangan
a pakaibabainan
ti ina, manang, ikit, nanaubing, kabsat a babai,
iti dayag a pakariingan
dagiti aglunit a sugat gapu iti subukan
ken mamaen
ken gawed
ken bua
ken tupra ti lakay nga akinkukua
iti buneng a pagiwa
iti kinatao, kinalalaki, kinaasinno
iti panangrienda iti bagi nga aganug-og
a ti dana ti kinalalaki,
daytay dana a tapoktapok
ken nainlasagan
tumangken dagiti nakemtayo
datayo a tagikukua dagiti kannawid
ti panagarem iti amin panawen
ket agpatangkentayo iti tallaong
agpatangkentay iti sipgnet ken lawag
ket pukawentay ti bain, yanodtay kadagiti karayan
ken aripit ken waig dagiti gumawgawawa a sellang
awanan bain a saksi dagiti masalsalsal nga isip
ta ibardayna
dagiti amin a supot
dagiti amin a di makaammo nga agarog
dagiti amin a di mangkin-od kadagiti walang a rikna
di makarikna iti gagatel
iti lakko ti palad
a pakaurnongan ti tured
ti rugso nga adda iti makurimes
a kanito a para kadatayo laeng
iti laksid dagiti ribo a kanito ti pannakigasanggasat
kas iti pannakilumlumba iti apres ken darang
a pangidigosan
iti regget nga agkamang
kadagiti mail-ila a luppo
sadanto agpangato
iti mawaw a karabukob
iti mailiw a dila
iti agbarabara a piditpidit
iti agkutukot a tumeng
gapu iti panagtibnok ti panagbuteng
ken panangganas
iti natured a lasag man
wenno iti nakalseb a panunot,
ayna, anian!
kaskasdi ta kaskasdi
ti unnoy dagiti baredbed
ti kinabarito a kinalalaki met
a kinatakneng met laeng
datayo a buto wenno dagiti buto a datayo
datayo a lateg wenno dagiti lateg a datayo
datayo a batillog wenno dagiti batillog a datayo
datayo a lukdit wenno dagiti lukdit a datayo
datayo a lusngit wenno dagiti lusngit a datayo
datayo a lungat wenno dagiti lungat a datayo
datayo a kaper wenno dagit kaper a datayo
datayo a patpatiray-ok ti ili
datayo a paspasablog ti pagilian
datayo a salamangka ti daga a nakayanakan
datayo amin a minulmulluong dagiti poder
datayo amin nga inrurumen dagiti panangngaasi
datayo a di makasaan iti kadawyan, wen,
datayo a di masursuroan a mangiyebkas
iti balikas ti panagwaywayas
dagiti buto a nawayawayaan
dagiti lateg nga agabuyo
dagiti bukelbukel a di makaidna
uray kadagiti di maipeksa a balikas
dagiti nadakiwas a panaggagatel ti tengnged
a mangidiaya iti sabali a tengnged
datayo a wen a wen
gapu ta dayta ti kuna
dagiti ammatayo a sariwawek
dagiti ulitegtayo a barrairong a balliodong
nga agbirkog iti panaggangganas
kadagiti sipnget iti sulinek
nga agbirkog kadagiti mataog a bagas
tapno laeng maisala ti mannala a balangkantis
a suni dagiti agragut a rikna
agbirbirok iti panagpabus-oy
kadagiti walwalang a paggaak
ti sabali nga ayat
wenno sabali a panangidiaya ken ayat
iti panagkinnikinni dagiti de-kolor a silaw
iti panaggargari dagiti agek a maipalladaw
kadagiti lugar a naliday numan
pay nalabon dagiti panagngaretnget
iti sinitsaron a sennaay ti kinalalaki
nga inuugma
nga insalda dagiti duogan a pudno
nga inkitikit iti tableta dagiti pantalon,
karsonsilio, ablat, latigo, barbas,
maubon-ubon a nagan dagiti inay-ayam
Ayna, kabsat, iti aldaw dagiti butotayo,
iti aldaw dagiti lategtayo,
ipeksatay man ketdi
ti gulib dagiti antigo a babak,
dagiti basol dagiti duogan
a panagkanaig dagiti daradara a lasag
dagiti didiosen a kaing-ingas
ti kinamalalaki
dagiti rabii nga aradasentayo
met laeng dagiti lamolamo a riknatayo
tapno iti pantok dagiti balligi
dagiti naisangsangayan a derrep,
sadiay, sadiay a kunaentayo:
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a buto!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a lateg!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a batillog!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a lukdit!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a kaper!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a lusngit!
Daytoy, daytoy, daytoy ti kuskusto a bukelbukel!
Martir dagitoy a buto, martir iti ganggantil.
Bannuar dagitoy a lateg, bannuar dagiti agpaparaw nga araraw.
Santo dagitoy a butillog, santo dagiti rikna nga agam-amangaw.
Presidente dagitoy a lukdit, presidente dagiti kari a kinukusit.
Diputado dagitoy a kaper, diputado dagiti pork barrel.
Senador dagitoy a lusngit, senador dagiti linteg ti attit.
Kardinal dagitoy a bukelbukel, kardinal dagiti ayat a nasukir.
Pagilian dagiti buto amin dagitoy
Pagilian dagiti buto a langgong
Pagilian dagiti buto a sansanuong.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nob. 26, 2005
Kalpasan ti Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Agkurnoka iti kuridemdem
a bigat ditoy Los Angeles
kalpasan ti aldaw
ti panagyaman
a pinagbidaan dagiti pabo,
isuda a nanglamut
kadagiti trigo
a naaramid koma pandesal
para kadagiti ub-ubbing
a kuttungi ken saksakidol
iti naggapuan nga ili,
iti papanan nga ili,
pagindegan dagiti gasut
a sansaning-i
iti bigat
iti rabii.
Awan ta
dimo matilmon,
dimo mairusok
ti kinapalangguad
dagiti agbubutit a lamisaan,
dagiti bisti a saramsam,
panggudas kadagiti amin
a mabisbisinan,
ar-arak kadagiti adu
pay a makan.
Malagipmo ti rupa
ti bisin
kadagiti kataltalonan
idiay San Jose iti Baggao,
kas iti ladawan ti kinapimpiman
kadagiti ubbing iti pagbasuraan
iti Kamanilaan, sadiay
a sentro
dagiti amin a kita
ti kinamannibrong
dagiti malalaki iti konggreso
dagiti nakabarong,
agipaagong iti panaginglesda
kadagiti kari ti latok
wenno bandeha,
pagikabilan
iti pampanunoten
laeng a tig-ab
ti panagmalmalanga.
Agkiraos ti tian,
agsanaang kalpasan
ti mammagusto
nga aldaw ti panagyaman,
agulser ti utek
a mangpanunot
ti bangbangir a kalintegan
dagiti papel a papel
dagiti sakmol a sakmol
dagiti tilmon a tilmon
ken dagiti aguy-uray
kadagiti maregmeg
kadagiti tedtedda
kadagiti saraaw
iti nagabay a pammigat.
Manipud ditoy siudad
ti kisang ken kinalabon,
agingga iti pagilian a naggapuan,
nga ili met laeng
ti kaskasdid a kisang
ti kaskasdi met a kinalabon,
agtibnok dagiti arak ti ubas
ti arak ti basi
ken ti sakit ti nakem,
panaglidok a panglamlamiong
iti naparkagan a karabukob
a manglanglanggong,
pangugas iti kararua
pangontra iti panagmauyong
dagiti pintasen a sabsabong
iti tengnga dagiti malamot
a riwriw nga agpunpunsion.
A. S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nob. 25, 2005
a bigat ditoy Los Angeles
kalpasan ti aldaw
ti panagyaman
a pinagbidaan dagiti pabo,
isuda a nanglamut
kadagiti trigo
a naaramid koma pandesal
para kadagiti ub-ubbing
a kuttungi ken saksakidol
iti naggapuan nga ili,
iti papanan nga ili,
pagindegan dagiti gasut
a sansaning-i
iti bigat
iti rabii.
Awan ta
dimo matilmon,
dimo mairusok
ti kinapalangguad
dagiti agbubutit a lamisaan,
dagiti bisti a saramsam,
panggudas kadagiti amin
a mabisbisinan,
ar-arak kadagiti adu
pay a makan.
Malagipmo ti rupa
ti bisin
kadagiti kataltalonan
idiay San Jose iti Baggao,
kas iti ladawan ti kinapimpiman
kadagiti ubbing iti pagbasuraan
iti Kamanilaan, sadiay
a sentro
dagiti amin a kita
ti kinamannibrong
dagiti malalaki iti konggreso
dagiti nakabarong,
agipaagong iti panaginglesda
kadagiti kari ti latok
wenno bandeha,
pagikabilan
iti pampanunoten
laeng a tig-ab
ti panagmalmalanga.
Agkiraos ti tian,
agsanaang kalpasan
ti mammagusto
nga aldaw ti panagyaman,
agulser ti utek
a mangpanunot
ti bangbangir a kalintegan
dagiti papel a papel
dagiti sakmol a sakmol
dagiti tilmon a tilmon
ken dagiti aguy-uray
kadagiti maregmeg
kadagiti tedtedda
kadagiti saraaw
iti nagabay a pammigat.
Manipud ditoy siudad
ti kisang ken kinalabon,
agingga iti pagilian a naggapuan,
nga ili met laeng
ti kaskasdid a kisang
ti kaskasdi met a kinalabon,
agtibnok dagiti arak ti ubas
ti arak ti basi
ken ti sakit ti nakem,
panaglidok a panglamlamiong
iti naparkagan a karabukob
a manglanglanggong,
pangugas iti kararua
pangontra iti panagmauyong
dagiti pintasen a sabsabong
iti tengnga dagiti malamot
a riwriw nga agpunpunsion.
A. S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nob. 25, 2005
Sungbat ti Kaingungot
Daytoy ti sungbat
ti kaingungot iti nagabay a surat:
Patgek nga asawa:
An-anosam dagiti ribo pay kinaagmaymaysa.
Anosam met dagiti ribo pay a pannakabibi.
Adayo ngamin ti lagip ket saan a kas karina nga agpangen dagiti aldaw ken espasio ni ayat a para kadagiti annak, isuda a gapu dagitoy a panangisagutta kadagiti ladingit ken ragsak.
No dadduma, madanaganak gapu kadagiti linabag, dagiti naulimek a pahina dagiti email iti kada bigat a padaanak ti baro a damag manipud kenka, kadakayo amin iti adayo a lugar, dakakayo a pimmanaw tapno di kami pumanaw, dakayo nga agsagsagrap iti saem tapno dimi masagrap ti ania man a saem.
Patibkerem ti nakem.
Kas iti daniwmo iti maysa nga exilo a naisalakan iti didigra, addanto aldaw a panagapit kadagiti amin nga intukit: ti daniwmo, kas pagarigan, a maipapan iti panagbirbirok iti kaipapanan.
Ala, agisemto ti gasat kadatayo, datayo a mamati iti linteg dagiti baybay a namagsina kadatayo, iti linteg dagiti maipasngay a kaasi
dagiti rabii dagiti sining-i.
Ditay maawanan iti simbeng ti pakinakem ta adda unnoy
dagiti agapon a samiweng, agindegda kadagiti barukongtayo, ditoyda a dumngeg kadagiti kararagtayo,
Kaingungotmo
ti kaingungot iti nagabay a surat:
Patgek nga asawa:
An-anosam dagiti ribo pay kinaagmaymaysa.
Anosam met dagiti ribo pay a pannakabibi.
Adayo ngamin ti lagip ket saan a kas karina nga agpangen dagiti aldaw ken espasio ni ayat a para kadagiti annak, isuda a gapu dagitoy a panangisagutta kadagiti ladingit ken ragsak.
No dadduma, madanaganak gapu kadagiti linabag, dagiti naulimek a pahina dagiti email iti kada bigat a padaanak ti baro a damag manipud kenka, kadakayo amin iti adayo a lugar, dakakayo a pimmanaw tapno di kami pumanaw, dakayo nga agsagsagrap iti saem tapno dimi masagrap ti ania man a saem.
Patibkerem ti nakem.
Kas iti daniwmo iti maysa nga exilo a naisalakan iti didigra, addanto aldaw a panagapit kadagiti amin nga intukit: ti daniwmo, kas pagarigan, a maipapan iti panagbirbirok iti kaipapanan.
Ala, agisemto ti gasat kadatayo, datayo a mamati iti linteg dagiti baybay a namagsina kadatayo, iti linteg dagiti maipasngay a kaasi
dagiti rabii dagiti sining-i.
Ditay maawanan iti simbeng ti pakinakem ta adda unnoy
dagiti agapon a samiweng, agindegda kadagiti barukongtayo, ditoyda a dumngeg kadagiti kararagtayo,
Kaingungotmo
Agas ti Aradas
Saan a gameng
ti agas ti aradas.
Kararua ti nagtagisugat
ket sadiay,
iti lugar dagiti ulep
a mangipakdaar iti tudo,
sadiay a parsuaen
dagiti kalgaw
ti rikna a maal-alaw.
Agibit ta agibit
ti ina iti kastoy
a buya
ti pannakaidadanes.
Idi man.
Ita man.
Idi ken ita,
isu met laeng
kinabarengbareng.
Estoriatay met ngamin
daytoy, daytoy
a panagkayangkayang
a pannakailuges
ti utek
kadagiti amin
a nasam-it a kari.
Ditay makasursuro,
awanantay iti sursuro
ta nalaaw dagiti kaltaang
nga agapon
kadagiti taengtayo
kadagiti taltalontayo
a mabisibisan
kadagiti sabasabali
a dara ti pammadso.
Mangriknatay koma, a,
ngem kaskasdi met
a di mangrikna
dagiti sisusugat
a puso ti ilitayo.
Gibusantay koma
ti panagdaringungo
dagiti bingkol
ti panagsarua
dagiti agbanatabat
a ragsak
dagiti agbasingbasing
a linnaaw
iti malammin nga aldaw
ngem anian
ta dagitoy
a rikna
ket kasingin
dagiti pukawpukaw.
Isu a ti agas
ti aradas
ket tay tamay
ti angin,
daytay man mangikipas
iti kinabulbulitor
ti naiwawa a kasinsin.
A. S. Agcaoili
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
Carson, CA
ti agas ti aradas.
Kararua ti nagtagisugat
ket sadiay,
iti lugar dagiti ulep
a mangipakdaar iti tudo,
sadiay a parsuaen
dagiti kalgaw
ti rikna a maal-alaw.
Agibit ta agibit
ti ina iti kastoy
a buya
ti pannakaidadanes.
Idi man.
Ita man.
Idi ken ita,
isu met laeng
kinabarengbareng.
Estoriatay met ngamin
daytoy, daytoy
a panagkayangkayang
a pannakailuges
ti utek
kadagiti amin
a nasam-it a kari.
Ditay makasursuro,
awanantay iti sursuro
ta nalaaw dagiti kaltaang
nga agapon
kadagiti taengtayo
kadagiti taltalontayo
a mabisibisan
kadagiti sabasabali
a dara ti pammadso.
Mangriknatay koma, a,
ngem kaskasdi met
a di mangrikna
dagiti sisusugat
a puso ti ilitayo.
Gibusantay koma
ti panagdaringungo
dagiti bingkol
ti panagsarua
dagiti agbanatabat
a ragsak
dagiti agbasingbasing
a linnaaw
iti malammin nga aldaw
ngem anian
ta dagitoy
a rikna
ket kasingin
dagiti pukawpukaw.
Isu a ti agas
ti aradas
ket tay tamay
ti angin,
daytay man mangikipas
iti kinabulbulitor
ti naiwawa a kasinsin.
A. S. Agcaoili
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
Carson, CA
Ti Mapitutan a Gasat
Agrarana amin
a rikna ditoy
a lugar
ti panagbaliudong.
Kuna ti megalotto
a tallo gasut a million
ti katukad ti de-numero
a gasat, gatangen daytoy
iti sandi
ti panagbangungot
iti rabii,
daytay kannayon dagiti araraw
a saantay koman
nga umadayo
tapno agbirok
iti maisakmol
kadagiti law-ang
dagiti estranghero
a rabii.
Ditoy adayo,
agmalangakami
a kankanayon.
No dadduma, bilangenmi
dagiti kuton nga agarak
kadagiti asukar
nga ibellengmi iti datar,
napia laeng
a pakaragsakan
a pangandingay
iti kinapimpiman
dagiti agsapami,
dakami a makilumlumba
kadagiti gasat
a ganggannaet
iti appupo.
Ikidemmi
dagiti nabannog
a mata.
Iti panunot, iladawanmi
dagiti aldaw ti kinalabon,
salsala dagiti agkanaganan
panagtutungtong a kadua
dagiti tambutambong
panaginudo iti sardam
a nalamiis dagiti piditpidit.
Balinsueken
ti naimbag a gasat
iti panagkuremrem
ti muging.
Sadiay a biroken
dagiti babato,
dagitay mangisuro
iti napintas a paris
dagiti elemento.
A. S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
a rikna ditoy
a lugar
ti panagbaliudong.
Kuna ti megalotto
a tallo gasut a million
ti katukad ti de-numero
a gasat, gatangen daytoy
iti sandi
ti panagbangungot
iti rabii,
daytay kannayon dagiti araraw
a saantay koman
nga umadayo
tapno agbirok
iti maisakmol
kadagiti law-ang
dagiti estranghero
a rabii.
Ditoy adayo,
agmalangakami
a kankanayon.
No dadduma, bilangenmi
dagiti kuton nga agarak
kadagiti asukar
nga ibellengmi iti datar,
napia laeng
a pakaragsakan
a pangandingay
iti kinapimpiman
dagiti agsapami,
dakami a makilumlumba
kadagiti gasat
a ganggannaet
iti appupo.
Ikidemmi
dagiti nabannog
a mata.
Iti panunot, iladawanmi
dagiti aldaw ti kinalabon,
salsala dagiti agkanaganan
panagtutungtong a kadua
dagiti tambutambong
panaginudo iti sardam
a nalamiis dagiti piditpidit.
Balinsueken
ti naimbag a gasat
iti panagkuremrem
ti muging.
Sadiay a biroken
dagiti babato,
dagitay mangisuro
iti napintas a paris
dagiti elemento.
A. S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Aginnagaw ti sipnget
ken lawag iti daytoy
nga aldaw ti panagyaman.
Bay-ak nga agringgor
dagiti telepono
a no agkiriring
ket aggigiddan.
Kukuak daytoy nga aldaw
kalpasan ti panangtimplak
kadagiti balikas ti warnakan
nga idadauluan,
daytoy a dokumento
dagiti darepdep
dagiti exilo
a pakaisalakanan.
Lagipek amin
a napalabas,
kas iti isusubli
dagiti pakadanagan
iti ili nga imbati
iti panunot,
iti isusubli
ti sabali manen
a "Hello Garci!"
Nanamek ti panagmaymaysak
iti nalawa
a pantok dagiti bantay
iti isip.
Agtugawak nga umanges,
umangesak nga agtugaw
ket bay-ak
nga agsao
ti umel a plumak.
Agiyuged kadagiti saem
iti ipapanaw
agikur-it
iti sanaang
iti mapitpitutan
a panagsubli
iti purok
dagiti padaya
ti kinaubing,
iti panawen
ti isip
a di pay nagdara,
di pay nadunggiran.
Adu ngamin
ti pakakumikoman
ditoy,
kas kadagiti paulo
dagiti leddaang,
gumawgawawada
iti espasio
kadagiti nakem
a maluktan.
Adda ragsak
kadagiti padaya
ngem bay-ak a kutimek
dagiti am-ammok
itan a sennaay.
Diak kayat
ti ania man
a katawa,
diak kayat
ti ania man
a pakaikawaan
dagiti manglimlimo
a balikas, agbanniagada
kadagiti panid,
agpukawda
kadagiti kanibusanan
dagiti taraon
nga ar-artiok
dagiti manglimlimo
a dulang.
Iti Skid Row,
agtakder ti padi
a mangted iti limos:
Maysa a doliar para kenka,
Maysa a doliar
para iti pammakawan
iti basol ti pagilian
a mangdusdusa
kadagiti di tataoan.
Anian ta agpilapila
dagiti mabisin,
agdarepdepda piman
iti labon dagiti taraon
a pimpiman.
Siak, iserrak ti ridaw.
Agseggedak iti asul
a kandela,
kaduak daytoy
iti kaduak
a kasipngetan.
Panunotek dagiti paulo
dagiti panagmaymaysa,
amin a panagmaymaysa
nga awanan nagan
iti daytoy nga aldaw
ti panagyaman.
A. S. Agcaoili
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
Carson, CA
ken lawag iti daytoy
nga aldaw ti panagyaman.
Bay-ak nga agringgor
dagiti telepono
a no agkiriring
ket aggigiddan.
Kukuak daytoy nga aldaw
kalpasan ti panangtimplak
kadagiti balikas ti warnakan
nga idadauluan,
daytoy a dokumento
dagiti darepdep
dagiti exilo
a pakaisalakanan.
Lagipek amin
a napalabas,
kas iti isusubli
dagiti pakadanagan
iti ili nga imbati
iti panunot,
iti isusubli
ti sabali manen
a "Hello Garci!"
Nanamek ti panagmaymaysak
iti nalawa
a pantok dagiti bantay
iti isip.
Agtugawak nga umanges,
umangesak nga agtugaw
ket bay-ak
nga agsao
ti umel a plumak.
Agiyuged kadagiti saem
iti ipapanaw
agikur-it
iti sanaang
iti mapitpitutan
a panagsubli
iti purok
dagiti padaya
ti kinaubing,
iti panawen
ti isip
a di pay nagdara,
di pay nadunggiran.
Adu ngamin
ti pakakumikoman
ditoy,
kas kadagiti paulo
dagiti leddaang,
gumawgawawada
iti espasio
kadagiti nakem
a maluktan.
Adda ragsak
kadagiti padaya
ngem bay-ak a kutimek
dagiti am-ammok
itan a sennaay.
Diak kayat
ti ania man
a katawa,
diak kayat
ti ania man
a pakaikawaan
dagiti manglimlimo
a balikas, agbanniagada
kadagiti panid,
agpukawda
kadagiti kanibusanan
dagiti taraon
nga ar-artiok
dagiti manglimlimo
a dulang.
Iti Skid Row,
agtakder ti padi
a mangted iti limos:
Maysa a doliar para kenka,
Maysa a doliar
para iti pammakawan
iti basol ti pagilian
a mangdusdusa
kadagiti di tataoan.
Anian ta agpilapila
dagiti mabisin,
agdarepdepda piman
iti labon dagiti taraon
a pimpiman.
Siak, iserrak ti ridaw.
Agseggedak iti asul
a kandela,
kaduak daytoy
iti kaduak
a kasipngetan.
Panunotek dagiti paulo
dagiti panagmaymaysa,
amin a panagmaymaysa
nga awanan nagan
iti daytoy nga aldaw
ti panagyaman.
A. S. Agcaoili
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Nob. 24, 2005
Carson, CA
Prologo Para iti Monologo ti Batillog
Idi nangisuroak iti teoria ti kritisismo para iti programa ti doktorado ti literatura iti Unibersidad ti Pilipinas, nagbalin nga estudiantek dagiti nalalatak a mannurat iti pagilian.
Practioner amin dagitoy ket saan a mabalin a lebel ti craft ti entrada ti panagisuro. Ammodan ti craft. Saanen nga abalbalayen ti kabaelanda.
Gapu ta sabali a lebel ti panagisuro iti teoria, nabayag a nagpampanunotak. Binirokko ti lebel ti diskurso ti literatura.
Kinaagpaysuanna, agarup dua a bulan ti pannakaisagana dagiti loadmi para iti sumuno a semestre isu nga umanay met ti panawen tapno mabalabalami dagiti silabusmi.
Maysa pay, saan laeng a dayta a semestre ti panagisurok iti teoria.
Nangisuroak pay iti pilosopia ti lengguahe iti nabayag a panawen.
Iti laksid dagitoy a padas--ken bassit a kabaelan--nagbalin a burburtia kaniak dagiti metodo ken metodolohia ti panangisuro iti teoria.
Diak kayat a maysa a prosesion wenno libut wenno parada dagiti idea ti mapasamak iti klasek.
Masapul nga ipakitak kadagiti nalalatak nga estudiantek a mannuarat--pasigda amin a premiado, nobelista, propesor, kritiko, whew!--saan met a sinsinan ti ammok. Ahem, ahem!
Iti panagsuksukisokko para iti modiul ti gender, sexuality, ken literatura, nasalamaak ti libro ni Eve Ensler, daytay "Vagina Monologues."
Saan pay unay a naglatak daytoy idi ta sakbay daytoy ti produksion ni Monique Wilson iti Ingles ken Filipino.
Binasak ti libro--masapul a basaek tapno diak met agbalin a maag iti klase.
Impa-xeroxko ti intero a libro uray no tiliwenda kano dagiti agaramid iti kastoy. Anian a kinapangas dagiti agtuturay, ania? Iparitda iti nga agbalin a di kuneng dagiti tao babaen ti panangiparitda a mabasa, maaprosan, ken makakaatag (wen, kaatagko dagiti librok ket ammok a biroken, uray iti eksakto a panid, dagiti impormasion a kayatko).
Iti shopping center ti UP, adda latta dagiti kakunsaba a mayat a mangi-xerox iti sibubukel a libro isu a nananamko man a binasbasa ni Eve Ensler.
Adu dagiti kari a nakalemmeng kadagiti monologo ni Ensler.
Sabali a kidag ti yeg ti lengguahena, dagiti ladawan, ti artistiko a pamuspusan nga ar-aramatenna tapno no maiyallatiwna ti kinabaknang ti padas ti tao ken kinatao.
Ngem siempre, panirigan ti babai ti adda iti proyekto ni Ensler.
Kalkulado ti mision ken sirmatana: ti pannakawayawaya dagiti maidaddadanes a babbai, kas kadagiti adda iti Afghanistan nga iturturayan dagiti Taliban.
Dayta ti rugi ti pannakasudak ti nakemko.
Nasulek ti matak.
Nariduma ti barukongko.
Timrarong a kasla uong dagiti saludsod iti isipko:
(a) no adda dagiti nakakarsel a babbai, adda met dagiti mangipuppupok kadakuada. No kasta, ania/sinno dagiti mangipuppupok kadakuada?
(b) no adda "Vagina Monolgues," adda kadi met kaes-eskan ti "Penis Monologues" (pampanunotek daytoy a titulon idi ket agay-ayam iti panunotko ti Ilocanona: Dagiti Monologo ti Buto wenno Batillog wenno Lukdit wenno ania man ditan a simbolo ti kinalalaki?
Adu pay a saludsod agingga a naipatarus ti VM iti Filipino ket naiparang daytoy iti Manila.
Malagipko nga inramanko a rekisito dagiti kursok ti pannakabuya dagiti estudiantek kadaytoy (iti man Pinoy a bersionna nga "Usapang Puki" wenno iti orihinal nga Ingles.
Agingga a dimteng daytoy proyekto ti panagipatarus nga aggapu ken ni Prop. Precy Espiritu iti Unibersidad ti Hawaii iti Manoa: ti "V-Day Monologues in Filipino."
Narigat ti agiyulog--narigrigat nga amang ngem ti agikur-it iti bukod nga aramid.
Malagipko nga idi mangrugrugi ti UP Writers Workshop nga ilukat ti ridawna para kadagiti Ilocano ken Bikolano a mannurat, nayabaga kaniak ti pannakapaitarus dagiti adu a manuskrito dagiti napili a fellows nga Ilocano.
Nalagipko met nga iti maysa a sesion iti workship, inapadak pay dagiti fellows ken ti maysa a panel gapu ta saan kano nga umiso ti panagiyulogko. Kasla nengneng, kunada.
Anian!
Ngem kunak idi, kas depensa ti aramidko, nga awan ti perpekto a patarus ket asinno man nga agipatarus ket naynay latta nga agar-arikap iti sipnget dagiti sao, iti kari dagiti balikas, iti testamento dagiti idea, pakasaritaan, padas, ken expektasion dagiti agbasbasa ken dagiti mannurat.
Ala, naglektiurak, ama, ta nagbara ti piditpiditko! Nilektiurak dagiti fellows ken dagiti panel. Ha! Uray man!
Numuna ta adda met bassit ammok iti teoria ti panagipatarus ta nagespesialistaak iti hermenuetiks iti masterado ti pilosopia.
Siak sa ti immuna a nagespesialista iti kasta iti unibersidad.
Sangapulo a tawen a nangisursuroak iti graduate school ti pilosopia idiay Christ the King ket dandani agpadpadi amin dagiti estudiantek. Pilosopia ti lengguahe met laeng ti maysa kadagiti kursok kadakuada. Kunaenda ketdin a diak ammo ti agiyulog?
Kasano koma nga ay-ayamem ti utek dagitoy?
Awan ti ammoda nga aramiden no di agbasa kadagiti teoria, maabalbalaymo ida? No way!
Kunada ditoy Amerika: No way, Jose! Matukmaandaka no aginlalaingka.
Bulastog, kunada.
Sadakanto pagsasaritaan--wenno katkatawaan ti likudam.
Matayka iti bain no aginlalaingka iti graduate school dagiti papadi a ti laeng ammoda ket agbasa iti libro ken agamiris iti idea tapno mapasantakda ti biag ti panunotda.
Anyways, pinanunotko a naimbag no ania ti langa ti "Monologo ti Buto". Kasano ngata, aya, ama ti mangirugi?
Monologo ti Lateg?
Monologo ti..? Ha!
Daytoy patarusko a V-Day Monologues ket maysa nga impluensia. Kayatko daytay partena a: "Pagilian ti uki amin dagitoy!"
So: iti Monologo ti Buto, kastoy ti tesisna: "Pagilian ti Uki ken Buto Amin Dagitoy".
Ala man, tulungandak.
No kabaelanyo dagiti naindagaan a balikas, a.
Wenno mapengdanyo ti riknayo a mangibaga nga, Anian daytoy a mannurat ta nagbastosen!
Pasakalye iti Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Carson, California
Nob. 24, 2005
Practioner amin dagitoy ket saan a mabalin a lebel ti craft ti entrada ti panagisuro. Ammodan ti craft. Saanen nga abalbalayen ti kabaelanda.
Gapu ta sabali a lebel ti panagisuro iti teoria, nabayag a nagpampanunotak. Binirokko ti lebel ti diskurso ti literatura.
Kinaagpaysuanna, agarup dua a bulan ti pannakaisagana dagiti loadmi para iti sumuno a semestre isu nga umanay met ti panawen tapno mabalabalami dagiti silabusmi.
Maysa pay, saan laeng a dayta a semestre ti panagisurok iti teoria.
Nangisuroak pay iti pilosopia ti lengguahe iti nabayag a panawen.
Iti laksid dagitoy a padas--ken bassit a kabaelan--nagbalin a burburtia kaniak dagiti metodo ken metodolohia ti panangisuro iti teoria.
Diak kayat a maysa a prosesion wenno libut wenno parada dagiti idea ti mapasamak iti klasek.
Masapul nga ipakitak kadagiti nalalatak nga estudiantek a mannuarat--pasigda amin a premiado, nobelista, propesor, kritiko, whew!--saan met a sinsinan ti ammok. Ahem, ahem!
Iti panagsuksukisokko para iti modiul ti gender, sexuality, ken literatura, nasalamaak ti libro ni Eve Ensler, daytay "Vagina Monologues."
Saan pay unay a naglatak daytoy idi ta sakbay daytoy ti produksion ni Monique Wilson iti Ingles ken Filipino.
Binasak ti libro--masapul a basaek tapno diak met agbalin a maag iti klase.
Impa-xeroxko ti intero a libro uray no tiliwenda kano dagiti agaramid iti kastoy. Anian a kinapangas dagiti agtuturay, ania? Iparitda iti nga agbalin a di kuneng dagiti tao babaen ti panangiparitda a mabasa, maaprosan, ken makakaatag (wen, kaatagko dagiti librok ket ammok a biroken, uray iti eksakto a panid, dagiti impormasion a kayatko).
Iti shopping center ti UP, adda latta dagiti kakunsaba a mayat a mangi-xerox iti sibubukel a libro isu a nananamko man a binasbasa ni Eve Ensler.
Adu dagiti kari a nakalemmeng kadagiti monologo ni Ensler.
Sabali a kidag ti yeg ti lengguahena, dagiti ladawan, ti artistiko a pamuspusan nga ar-aramatenna tapno no maiyallatiwna ti kinabaknang ti padas ti tao ken kinatao.
Ngem siempre, panirigan ti babai ti adda iti proyekto ni Ensler.
Kalkulado ti mision ken sirmatana: ti pannakawayawaya dagiti maidaddadanes a babbai, kas kadagiti adda iti Afghanistan nga iturturayan dagiti Taliban.
Dayta ti rugi ti pannakasudak ti nakemko.
Nasulek ti matak.
Nariduma ti barukongko.
Timrarong a kasla uong dagiti saludsod iti isipko:
(a) no adda dagiti nakakarsel a babbai, adda met dagiti mangipuppupok kadakuada. No kasta, ania/sinno dagiti mangipuppupok kadakuada?
(b) no adda "Vagina Monolgues," adda kadi met kaes-eskan ti "Penis Monologues" (pampanunotek daytoy a titulon idi ket agay-ayam iti panunotko ti Ilocanona: Dagiti Monologo ti Buto wenno Batillog wenno Lukdit wenno ania man ditan a simbolo ti kinalalaki?
Adu pay a saludsod agingga a naipatarus ti VM iti Filipino ket naiparang daytoy iti Manila.
Malagipko nga inramanko a rekisito dagiti kursok ti pannakabuya dagiti estudiantek kadaytoy (iti man Pinoy a bersionna nga "Usapang Puki" wenno iti orihinal nga Ingles.
Agingga a dimteng daytoy proyekto ti panagipatarus nga aggapu ken ni Prop. Precy Espiritu iti Unibersidad ti Hawaii iti Manoa: ti "V-Day Monologues in Filipino."
Narigat ti agiyulog--narigrigat nga amang ngem ti agikur-it iti bukod nga aramid.
Malagipko nga idi mangrugrugi ti UP Writers Workshop nga ilukat ti ridawna para kadagiti Ilocano ken Bikolano a mannurat, nayabaga kaniak ti pannakapaitarus dagiti adu a manuskrito dagiti napili a fellows nga Ilocano.
Nalagipko met nga iti maysa a sesion iti workship, inapadak pay dagiti fellows ken ti maysa a panel gapu ta saan kano nga umiso ti panagiyulogko. Kasla nengneng, kunada.
Anian!
Ngem kunak idi, kas depensa ti aramidko, nga awan ti perpekto a patarus ket asinno man nga agipatarus ket naynay latta nga agar-arikap iti sipnget dagiti sao, iti kari dagiti balikas, iti testamento dagiti idea, pakasaritaan, padas, ken expektasion dagiti agbasbasa ken dagiti mannurat.
Ala, naglektiurak, ama, ta nagbara ti piditpiditko! Nilektiurak dagiti fellows ken dagiti panel. Ha! Uray man!
Numuna ta adda met bassit ammok iti teoria ti panagipatarus ta nagespesialistaak iti hermenuetiks iti masterado ti pilosopia.
Siak sa ti immuna a nagespesialista iti kasta iti unibersidad.
Sangapulo a tawen a nangisursuroak iti graduate school ti pilosopia idiay Christ the King ket dandani agpadpadi amin dagiti estudiantek. Pilosopia ti lengguahe met laeng ti maysa kadagiti kursok kadakuada. Kunaenda ketdin a diak ammo ti agiyulog?
Kasano koma nga ay-ayamem ti utek dagitoy?
Awan ti ammoda nga aramiden no di agbasa kadagiti teoria, maabalbalaymo ida? No way!
Kunada ditoy Amerika: No way, Jose! Matukmaandaka no aginlalaingka.
Bulastog, kunada.
Sadakanto pagsasaritaan--wenno katkatawaan ti likudam.
Matayka iti bain no aginlalaingka iti graduate school dagiti papadi a ti laeng ammoda ket agbasa iti libro ken agamiris iti idea tapno mapasantakda ti biag ti panunotda.
Anyways, pinanunotko a naimbag no ania ti langa ti "Monologo ti Buto". Kasano ngata, aya, ama ti mangirugi?
Monologo ti Lateg?
Monologo ti..? Ha!
Daytoy patarusko a V-Day Monologues ket maysa nga impluensia. Kayatko daytay partena a: "Pagilian ti uki amin dagitoy!"
So: iti Monologo ti Buto, kastoy ti tesisna: "Pagilian ti Uki ken Buto Amin Dagitoy".
Ala man, tulungandak.
No kabaelanyo dagiti naindagaan a balikas, a.
Wenno mapengdanyo ti riknayo a mangibaga nga, Anian daytoy a mannurat ta nagbastosen!
Pasakalye iti Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Carson, California
Nob. 24, 2005
V-DAY MONOLOGUES IN ILOCANO
V-DAY MONOLOGUES
NEW MONOLOGUES IN FILIPINO
By Rito Asilo
Impatarus ni Aurelio S. Agcaoili
ITI UNEG TI BURKA
INTRODUKSION
Idi napalabas a tawen sakbay a bimtak ti gubat iti Afghanistan, napan sadiay ni Eve Ensler. Sadiay a nasaksianna a mismo ti sibubukel a rupa ti ‘misogyny,’ wenno daytay naynay a pananggura iti babai, no daytoy ken maipakpakat met laeng. Iti babaen ti panangidadaulo ti Taliban, nagbiag dagiti babbai a kasla magmagna a bangkay. Dagitoy a monologo ket para kadagiti natutured, nakaem-emma, ken nakakasdaaw a babbai ti Afghanistan, isuda a saan laeng a naisalakan, no di ket agtultuloy met ti panangbibiagda ti bukodda a pagilian. Sapay koma ta kaduadatayo iti awan ressat a pannakidangadangda para iti bukodda a wayawaya a kannayon ti adal a para iti kinababaian, ti adal a ti Afghanistan ket adda iti amin a sulinek ti lubong.
Iti Uneg ti Burka
Panunotem, adda nakadakdakkel a nangisit a tela
a nakabitin iti sibubukel a bagim
a kunam la no maysaka a nakababain a rebulto
panunotem nga adda maysa a raya ti lawag
apagisu laeng tapno maammuam nga adda pay laeng silnag ti aldaw a para iti sabali
panunotem a daytoy ket napudot, nakapudpudot
panunotem a nabungonka iti tela,
malmalmes iti bado, iti sipnget.
Panunotem nga agpakpakaasika iti balkot ti kasla kubrekama a daytoy
agpatpatingga ti imam iti gayadan ti tela
a masapul a kadarrato a makaluban, awanan ti pampasileng, di masirsirip
ta no saan ket amangan no rumekrumekenda wenno putdenda daytoy
panunotem nga awan mangikabkabil iti pirak iti di makitkita nga imam
gapu ta awan makakitkita iti rupam
isu nga awananka iti kinatao
panunotem a di mo makitkita dagiti annakmo
Panunotem, ti lakaymo ti rantada,
ti kakaisuna a lalaki nga inayatmo
uray no ti kasaryo ket maysa laeng a tulagan.
gapu ta simmangpetda ket pinaltoganda isuna
ginandatmo nga ikinanawa ket binaddebaddekandaka
uppat a lallaki iti likudam
iti sango dagiti agririaw ng annakmo
panunotem ng agballakan
nupay di mo ammo a naperdin ti simbeng ti nakemmo
gapu ti adun a tawen a di mo nakitkita ti aldaw
ket malagipmo dagiti dua nga annakmo a babbai a dandani dimon mailasin
kasla darepdep a kaarngi ti langit nga adda laengen iti lagipmo
Panunotem, ar-arasaas laengen ti panagsaom
gapu ta saan a masuksukog ti timek iti kasipngetan
ket dika makasangit gapu ta aglallalo nga agpudot ket madaripespeska iti ling-et iti uneg.
panunotem dagiti barbas-sarado a kalakian nga am-ammom laeng iti angotda
rangranggasandaka
gapu ta puraw ti aruatmo a medias
panunotem a latlatiguendaka iti kalsada
iti sango dagiti tattao a di mo makitkita
panunotem a di mo makita ti sikigam
isu’t gapuna a kas iti sisusugat nga ayup
di mo kabaelan nga ikanawa ti bagim
wenno salidian dagiti ablat iti sikigan
panunotem a ti panagkatawa ket impawilda
iti pagiliam, uray ti musika
ket ti laeng aweng a mangngeg ket dagiti saibbek
ket saning-i dagiti sabsabali pay a babbai a rangranggasanda
iti uneg dagiti bukodda a tela, iti bukodda a kasipngetan.
Panunotem nga awan ti pagindegan
ti laeng malinongan ket ti tela
iti panagkatangkatang iti dalan
ket daytoy a pagpumponan
ket inaldaw-aldaw a bumasbassit, kumarkaro a kumarkaro ti angotna
sabasabali a bambanag ti mabadbaddekan
panunotem a mabekbekkelka
bayat ti panangkamkamatmo iti anges
panunotem a dimon ammo ti pagdumaan
ti panagbiag ken ti panagbugsot
isu nga insardengmon ti mangpadas nga agpakamatay
gapu ta kaskasdi a kaskasdi a madagdagullit laengen.
Pununotennak iti kaunggan
ti bukodmo a kasipngetan
sadiayak a naikulong
sadiayak a mapukpukaw
iti uneg ti tela
iti uneg ti nakemmo
iti uneg ti kasipngetan a laklak-amenta
panunotem nga sadiaynak a mabirokan
napintasak idi
addaan kadagiti dadakkel ken nangingisit a matmata
maam-ammonak.
TI NAKITING A PALDAK
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a panangiyayab
saan a panggargari
wenno paripirip
a kayatko,
a mangkalkalbitak.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a dumawdawat
ket saannaka met nga ar-artiokan
a pirgisen daytoy kaniak
wenno rabsuten nga ipababa.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a ligal a pakaigapuan
tapno aradasennak
nupay kastoy siguro idi
saanen a paglanlandagan daytoy
ti baro a husgado.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket maipapan iti panagtakuat
iti bileg dagiti sakak
maipapan iti nalamiis nga angin iti panagregreg dagiti bulong
agpasiar nga agpangato iti uneg dagiti luppok
panagpabus-oy iti amin a makitak
wenno malabasak wenno mariknak tapno agbiagak iti kaunggak
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a pammaneknek
ti kinamaag
wenno panagduadua
wenno panagtutudio laeng
Ti paldak a nakiting ket panagsaan
saanak nga umanamong a butbutgennak
ti paldak ket saan a panagpangas
siak daytoy
sakbay a binaonnak a kalubak
wenno igaygayadko daytoy
maruamka
Ti paldak a nakiting ket ragsak
mariknak ti bagik a nakabaddekak iti daga
addaak ditoy. Napudot, agas-asok.
Ti paldak a nakiting ket wayawaya
wagayway ti armada ti kinababaian
ipakpakaammok a dagitoy a kalsada, ania man a pagnaan
ket ili ti ukik.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket danum nga asul-berde
nga addaan kadagiti de-kolor a lames nga aglanglangoy
maysa a piesta iti kalgaw
iti nabituen a sipnget
maysa a tumatayab nga agsagsagawisiw
maysa a tren a sumangsangpet manipud iti estranghero nga ili
ti paldak a nakiting ket naranggas a panaguddog
maysa a sennaay
maysa a pusipos ti tanggo
ti paldak a nakiting
ket rugi
panangted iti kaibatugan
panangrayray-aw.
Ngem iti laksid ti amin
ti paldak a nakiting
ken amin adda iti uneg daytoy
ken Kukuak.
Kukuak.
Kukuak.
Nobiembre 24, 2005
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Carson, CA
(Panagyaman: Agyamanak ken ni Prop. Precy Espiritu kadaytoy a proyekto. Sabali a padas daytoy--maysa a pannakamurmuray iti sabali a nibel ni padas ken pannakawagwag ti turog ken ridep ken kalio ti nakem ken puso. Ipabuyanto kano ni Prop. Espiritu daytoy ket sinanamaak a maikarinto daytoy a patarus. Para iti kaaduan: ni Prop. Espiritu ti mangilunglungalong ken mangiturturong iti Ilocano Program iti Unibersidad ti Hawaii; daytoy a programa ti kaunaan iti intero a pakasaritaan ti akademia iti sibubukel a lubong--ti kaunaan a pakaipangrunaan ti sistematiko ken akademiko a pannakaadal ti kultura ken pagsasao ni Ilocano.)
NEW MONOLOGUES IN FILIPINO
By Rito Asilo
Impatarus ni Aurelio S. Agcaoili
ITI UNEG TI BURKA
INTRODUKSION
Idi napalabas a tawen sakbay a bimtak ti gubat iti Afghanistan, napan sadiay ni Eve Ensler. Sadiay a nasaksianna a mismo ti sibubukel a rupa ti ‘misogyny,’ wenno daytay naynay a pananggura iti babai, no daytoy ken maipakpakat met laeng. Iti babaen ti panangidadaulo ti Taliban, nagbiag dagiti babbai a kasla magmagna a bangkay. Dagitoy a monologo ket para kadagiti natutured, nakaem-emma, ken nakakasdaaw a babbai ti Afghanistan, isuda a saan laeng a naisalakan, no di ket agtultuloy met ti panangbibiagda ti bukodda a pagilian. Sapay koma ta kaduadatayo iti awan ressat a pannakidangadangda para iti bukodda a wayawaya a kannayon ti adal a para iti kinababaian, ti adal a ti Afghanistan ket adda iti amin a sulinek ti lubong.
Iti Uneg ti Burka
Panunotem, adda nakadakdakkel a nangisit a tela
a nakabitin iti sibubukel a bagim
a kunam la no maysaka a nakababain a rebulto
panunotem nga adda maysa a raya ti lawag
apagisu laeng tapno maammuam nga adda pay laeng silnag ti aldaw a para iti sabali
panunotem a daytoy ket napudot, nakapudpudot
panunotem a nabungonka iti tela,
malmalmes iti bado, iti sipnget.
Panunotem nga agpakpakaasika iti balkot ti kasla kubrekama a daytoy
agpatpatingga ti imam iti gayadan ti tela
a masapul a kadarrato a makaluban, awanan ti pampasileng, di masirsirip
ta no saan ket amangan no rumekrumekenda wenno putdenda daytoy
panunotem nga awan mangikabkabil iti pirak iti di makitkita nga imam
gapu ta awan makakitkita iti rupam
isu nga awananka iti kinatao
panunotem a di mo makitkita dagiti annakmo
Panunotem, ti lakaymo ti rantada,
ti kakaisuna a lalaki nga inayatmo
uray no ti kasaryo ket maysa laeng a tulagan.
gapu ta simmangpetda ket pinaltoganda isuna
ginandatmo nga ikinanawa ket binaddebaddekandaka
uppat a lallaki iti likudam
iti sango dagiti agririaw ng annakmo
panunotem ng agballakan
nupay di mo ammo a naperdin ti simbeng ti nakemmo
gapu ti adun a tawen a di mo nakitkita ti aldaw
ket malagipmo dagiti dua nga annakmo a babbai a dandani dimon mailasin
kasla darepdep a kaarngi ti langit nga adda laengen iti lagipmo
Panunotem, ar-arasaas laengen ti panagsaom
gapu ta saan a masuksukog ti timek iti kasipngetan
ket dika makasangit gapu ta aglallalo nga agpudot ket madaripespeska iti ling-et iti uneg.
panunotem dagiti barbas-sarado a kalakian nga am-ammom laeng iti angotda
rangranggasandaka
gapu ta puraw ti aruatmo a medias
panunotem a latlatiguendaka iti kalsada
iti sango dagiti tattao a di mo makitkita
panunotem a di mo makita ti sikigam
isu’t gapuna a kas iti sisusugat nga ayup
di mo kabaelan nga ikanawa ti bagim
wenno salidian dagiti ablat iti sikigan
panunotem a ti panagkatawa ket impawilda
iti pagiliam, uray ti musika
ket ti laeng aweng a mangngeg ket dagiti saibbek
ket saning-i dagiti sabsabali pay a babbai a rangranggasanda
iti uneg dagiti bukodda a tela, iti bukodda a kasipngetan.
Panunotem nga awan ti pagindegan
ti laeng malinongan ket ti tela
iti panagkatangkatang iti dalan
ket daytoy a pagpumponan
ket inaldaw-aldaw a bumasbassit, kumarkaro a kumarkaro ti angotna
sabasabali a bambanag ti mabadbaddekan
panunotem a mabekbekkelka
bayat ti panangkamkamatmo iti anges
panunotem a dimon ammo ti pagdumaan
ti panagbiag ken ti panagbugsot
isu nga insardengmon ti mangpadas nga agpakamatay
gapu ta kaskasdi a kaskasdi a madagdagullit laengen.
Pununotennak iti kaunggan
ti bukodmo a kasipngetan
sadiayak a naikulong
sadiayak a mapukpukaw
iti uneg ti tela
iti uneg ti nakemmo
iti uneg ti kasipngetan a laklak-amenta
panunotem nga sadiaynak a mabirokan
napintasak idi
addaan kadagiti dadakkel ken nangingisit a matmata
maam-ammonak.
TI NAKITING A PALDAK
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a panangiyayab
saan a panggargari
wenno paripirip
a kayatko,
a mangkalkalbitak.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a dumawdawat
ket saannaka met nga ar-artiokan
a pirgisen daytoy kaniak
wenno rabsuten nga ipababa.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a ligal a pakaigapuan
tapno aradasennak
nupay kastoy siguro idi
saanen a paglanlandagan daytoy
ti baro a husgado.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket maipapan iti panagtakuat
iti bileg dagiti sakak
maipapan iti nalamiis nga angin iti panagregreg dagiti bulong
agpasiar nga agpangato iti uneg dagiti luppok
panagpabus-oy iti amin a makitak
wenno malabasak wenno mariknak tapno agbiagak iti kaunggak
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket saan a pammaneknek
ti kinamaag
wenno panagduadua
wenno panagtutudio laeng
Ti paldak a nakiting ket panagsaan
saanak nga umanamong a butbutgennak
ti paldak ket saan a panagpangas
siak daytoy
sakbay a binaonnak a kalubak
wenno igaygayadko daytoy
maruamka
Ti paldak a nakiting ket ragsak
mariknak ti bagik a nakabaddekak iti daga
addaak ditoy. Napudot, agas-asok.
Ti paldak a nakiting ket wayawaya
wagayway ti armada ti kinababaian
ipakpakaammok a dagitoy a kalsada, ania man a pagnaan
ket ili ti ukik.
Ti paldak a nakiting
ket danum nga asul-berde
nga addaan kadagiti de-kolor a lames nga aglanglangoy
maysa a piesta iti kalgaw
iti nabituen a sipnget
maysa a tumatayab nga agsagsagawisiw
maysa a tren a sumangsangpet manipud iti estranghero nga ili
ti paldak a nakiting ket naranggas a panaguddog
maysa a sennaay
maysa a pusipos ti tanggo
ti paldak a nakiting
ket rugi
panangted iti kaibatugan
panangrayray-aw.
Ngem iti laksid ti amin
ti paldak a nakiting
ken amin adda iti uneg daytoy
ken Kukuak.
Kukuak.
Kukuak.
Nobiembre 24, 2005
Aldaw ti Panagyaman
Carson, CA
(Panagyaman: Agyamanak ken ni Prop. Precy Espiritu kadaytoy a proyekto. Sabali a padas daytoy--maysa a pannakamurmuray iti sabali a nibel ni padas ken pannakawagwag ti turog ken ridep ken kalio ti nakem ken puso. Ipabuyanto kano ni Prop. Espiritu daytoy ket sinanamaak a maikarinto daytoy a patarus. Para iti kaaduan: ni Prop. Espiritu ti mangilunglungalong ken mangiturturong iti Ilocano Program iti Unibersidad ti Hawaii; daytoy a programa ti kaunaan iti intero a pakasaritaan ti akademia iti sibubukel a lubong--ti kaunaan a pakaipangrunaan ti sistematiko ken akademiko a pannakaadal ti kultura ken pagsasao ni Ilocano.)
UNSPEAKABLY TRAGIC
The unevenness of the trade and economic conditions in the world is something to reckon with when we speak of the gains of Asian and Pacific countries in the last decades.
With the conclusion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Busan, we can only hope for the best for the region.
One thing that we need to see—and see clearly—is that there are two Asia- Pacific regions, two sides of the same coin: (a) the region that has all the means and the resources to push for a development agendum that addresses the needs of their own people based on the requisites of equality and justice and (b) the region that has only abject poverty as its gift to its people.
The Busan Declaration has stressed a key concept in the effort to put flesh and blood to the need for regional cooperation among the countries of Asia and the Pacific.
The key concept is human security—and this depends on implementing counter-terrorism, on securing trade, and on safe travel commitment from each of the 21 member economies.
Behind this intention is the unspeakably tragic.
There is human insecurity in the region and it is founded on the stark and ugly reality that widespread poverty has become the rule rather than the exception.
This unspeakably tragic reality is more pronounced in the rural areas than in the urban communities.
This gives us the idea that there is a lopsided distribution of the means to creating and generating wealth among the populace.
Asian Development Bank data reveals that in 2000 poverty line in the region registered a 10 percent decline from 1990 to 2000. The measure used for the poverty line is $1 or less per day.
The data would tell us the magnitude of the problem: one in six people in the region suffer from hunger because they are poor.
Or simply because they do not have easy access to the means to create wealth in order to afford them the power to purchase the food they need.
It is in South Asia that the phenomenon of abject poverty—those living $1 a day or below—is most severe.
Of the economies in the Asia-Pacific region in 2000, about 720 million people were poor. This number represents two-thirds of all the poor people in the world.
The rural-urban divide in the number of the poor tells us a glaring fact: that the countryside, where expectedly food is grown in abundance, there is more percentage of the poor in the rural than in the urban areas, says Macan-Markar.
In many countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, the agricultural sector is most prone to hunger and want; the people in the rural areas are poorer than in the urban areas.
The hard data shocks us: the Philippines has 48% of the poor in the rural areas while 18% are in the urban areas. Compare these with Cambodia, 40 against 20; Bangladesh, 37 against 19; Indonesia, 20 against 15.
As is the case with other tragic stories of social injustice in national and international scope, the basic reasons are the obvious: the failure in land distribution, the lack of access of the poor people to credit, and the lack of access to social services.
In the case of the Philippines, land distribution has always been a perennial issue. As of today, the government has yet to make good with its promise of a successful agrarian reform program because it is anchored on the tenets of social justice.
Inequity in resource ownership has remained the big issue of all countries in all times.
The United States is no exception.
Its unmasking of the “other America” in the aftermath of Katrina tells us the real score: That being a superpower does not necessarily mean that a country has been able to address head-on its obligation to justice and fairness.
At the conclusion of the 2005 APEC in Busan, the intents and purposes relative to the creation of a just and fair society for all the 21-member economies has been re-echoed.
How these good intentions will be translated into action remains to be seen.
With 93 percent—or 280 million—of the extremely poor are India, China, and South Asia and with women and children the number one victims of this phenomenon, APEC ought to be true to its goal of creating a fair region for all its member-economies.
APEC cannot afford to dilly-dally.
The clock is ticking—and the protracted response to this regional poverty will only result in the utter lack of human security.
There is no point imagining a better place other than a place of your own.
The terrorist thrives on the willful imagination of a better place.
Terrorism’s end, thus, is crucially connected to the putting in place of a just and good life for the peoples in these economies.
Not understanding this elementary logic is unspeakably tragic.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
With the conclusion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Busan, we can only hope for the best for the region.
One thing that we need to see—and see clearly—is that there are two Asia- Pacific regions, two sides of the same coin: (a) the region that has all the means and the resources to push for a development agendum that addresses the needs of their own people based on the requisites of equality and justice and (b) the region that has only abject poverty as its gift to its people.
The Busan Declaration has stressed a key concept in the effort to put flesh and blood to the need for regional cooperation among the countries of Asia and the Pacific.
The key concept is human security—and this depends on implementing counter-terrorism, on securing trade, and on safe travel commitment from each of the 21 member economies.
Behind this intention is the unspeakably tragic.
There is human insecurity in the region and it is founded on the stark and ugly reality that widespread poverty has become the rule rather than the exception.
This unspeakably tragic reality is more pronounced in the rural areas than in the urban communities.
This gives us the idea that there is a lopsided distribution of the means to creating and generating wealth among the populace.
Asian Development Bank data reveals that in 2000 poverty line in the region registered a 10 percent decline from 1990 to 2000. The measure used for the poverty line is $1 or less per day.
The data would tell us the magnitude of the problem: one in six people in the region suffer from hunger because they are poor.
Or simply because they do not have easy access to the means to create wealth in order to afford them the power to purchase the food they need.
It is in South Asia that the phenomenon of abject poverty—those living $1 a day or below—is most severe.
Of the economies in the Asia-Pacific region in 2000, about 720 million people were poor. This number represents two-thirds of all the poor people in the world.
The rural-urban divide in the number of the poor tells us a glaring fact: that the countryside, where expectedly food is grown in abundance, there is more percentage of the poor in the rural than in the urban areas, says Macan-Markar.
In many countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, the agricultural sector is most prone to hunger and want; the people in the rural areas are poorer than in the urban areas.
The hard data shocks us: the Philippines has 48% of the poor in the rural areas while 18% are in the urban areas. Compare these with Cambodia, 40 against 20; Bangladesh, 37 against 19; Indonesia, 20 against 15.
As is the case with other tragic stories of social injustice in national and international scope, the basic reasons are the obvious: the failure in land distribution, the lack of access of the poor people to credit, and the lack of access to social services.
In the case of the Philippines, land distribution has always been a perennial issue. As of today, the government has yet to make good with its promise of a successful agrarian reform program because it is anchored on the tenets of social justice.
Inequity in resource ownership has remained the big issue of all countries in all times.
The United States is no exception.
Its unmasking of the “other America” in the aftermath of Katrina tells us the real score: That being a superpower does not necessarily mean that a country has been able to address head-on its obligation to justice and fairness.
At the conclusion of the 2005 APEC in Busan, the intents and purposes relative to the creation of a just and fair society for all the 21-member economies has been re-echoed.
How these good intentions will be translated into action remains to be seen.
With 93 percent—or 280 million—of the extremely poor are India, China, and South Asia and with women and children the number one victims of this phenomenon, APEC ought to be true to its goal of creating a fair region for all its member-economies.
APEC cannot afford to dilly-dally.
The clock is ticking—and the protracted response to this regional poverty will only result in the utter lack of human security.
There is no point imagining a better place other than a place of your own.
The terrorist thrives on the willful imagination of a better place.
Terrorism’s end, thus, is crucially connected to the putting in place of a just and good life for the peoples in these economies.
Not understanding this elementary logic is unspeakably tragic.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
REDEMPTION-Chapter Four
“Redemption” tackles the life of five daughters and a mother. Two of the daughters are in the United States; the three are left in the home country trying as much as they could to live life in earnest and in the raw. All the five daughters carry with them the wounds that precede redemption: the wounds of life, the wounds of memory, the wounds of family, the wounds of relationships, the wound of discovering the rugged path to self-discovery and healing.
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
August 8, 2004
Orlando, Florida
Mother,
It is now August as I finish this letter. I started this many years ago but I never had the chance to complete it.
It is the season of the storms and wild days as I sit down to collect my thoughts and gather my hopes.
I hear the howling of the winds and the roaring of the waves as if we are here for that end-of-days thing that I had always heard from you when you would curse Father for hitting you hard in the face, the arms, the legs, the chest.
I watched them, the blows.
And I could never forget the suffering you went through and I never understood you.
One day, you just simply went away, you and Lorena.
Anywhere, so father said.
I could have told Father: Mother needed to go anywhere to get away from your inhumanity.
I was bitter but I did not know I was bitter.
I hated Father but I did not know I hated him.
I see now the connections, Mother, the interconnectedness of things.
Each time I felt hatred raging inside me when I was still in Honolulu with that useless husband, I would imagine the scene, get that energy of Father.
I would hit my husband hard, hit him with all my might, hit with anything I could lay my hands on, hit him in places where I felt the raging urge to do so.
And I would curse him the way Father would curse you.
And I would threaten him the way Father threatened you.
Father said to you oftentimes, You cannot run away from me now.
I told my husband, You cannot run away from me now.
Father told you, You run away and I will look for you anywhere and then when I find you, I will bring you back here, your hair tied on the rear of the cart drawn by a carabao. I would let people know that you ran away, ran away to where your freedom led, run away to your man, to your useless husband whose only right to you was that he owned your young heart in the beginning. But now you are mine and no one can ever lay his hand on you anymore.
I told my husband, You run away and I will call the police and tell them you deserted us, you useless bastard and son of a bitch. I will ask for that child support so that you will never be able to get back on your feet as a family man again. You will be financially distressed and I want that to happen to you so no woman can ever be tempted to get near you because you will have no way to support another son.
I had all the scenes when I was young.
Perhaps I was five when I realized Father hit you hard and I knew that Father loved you so.
I could not make two and two together but the days were heady and hard and our life was miserable.
I remember the many typhoons and storms and floods that would visit us in that barrio of Father, the barrio down the foothills, its small brook from the eastern mountains winding down towards the sea in the west.
The brook would temp the hills announcing the seminary of celibates or those who were trying to find God in the strange faith of clerics and missionaries, those habited who had to intone the sacred word every four hours in order to calm their nerves.
On many days, we did not have rice in the bin. But I would dream of angels in the seminary church that you would go to when Josefa died.
Or so I heard from some people’s stories.
As soon as Josefa died, you would wake up early in the morning, put on your best dress, put on the black veil of mourning, and then, with the light of stars giving you direction, go to the dawn mass officiated by the celibates in the hills.
You had your rosary, a black one, and a heirloom from Lola Madre.
I remembered that detail most.
I would look for that rosary with the angel in flight as if you were that angel, Mother.
As if I was that angel as well.
For many Easter Sundays, I wanted to be an angel.
We do not have money for the white gown, Rosario, you would say.
We do not have money for the white crepe paper for your wings.
We do not have money for the white shoes that would match your wings.
I would sulk in the corner.
I would cry in the dark.
I would talk to the angels of the night.
In my dreams, too, I would ask the guardian angel for the angel’s white gown, the angel’s white veil, the angel’s white socks, and the angel’s white shoes.
My guardian angel failed me.
If we had some scoops of rice, you would make a miracle.
You would put all the pearly grains in the bin onto boiling earthen pot and make gruel out of our hope for a good gracious meal.
That was neat, Mother.
If we were lucky, there would be the ginger to taste, some salt to taste, some vetsin to taste.
Ay, I would imagine the breast of a chicken on my bowl.
Or a solitary egg.
Or that fleshy leg of a wild chicken Father would bring home sometimes from the hills where he would gather dried twigs for the earthen stove.
There were days when the stove would be silent and I knew what that meant.
If we had something to partake of, I would see the stove coming alive.
I would watch the fire getting bigger and bigger from a small ember.
I would watch the firewood crackle, as if telling me, Rosario, Rosario, gather your wits.
Those were the days, Mother.
Some days I want to talk to you.
Some days I do not want to talk to you.
But most of the time, I do not want to be bothered by anyone.
That was why I ran away, away from you all, away from the sad memories, away from all that which reminded me of our days of misery and want.
I cannot bear the thought, Mother.
I die soon if I entertained that thought.
I do not want to have anything to do with the past that is why I am here in Orlando.
I am thousand of miles away from Manang Lagrimas and I want that.
I want that distance.
She cannot touch me.
She cannot remind me of anything.
She cannot be another mother to me.
Here I am with my only son trying to live life the best way I can by not having anything to do with anyone of you.
Holler, this is America.
Here, you be your own man.
Here, you cannot be somebody else’s keeper.
I like that idea because it gives me the freedom to run my life the way I want.
No sisters and brothers from own view of things.
I do not even know if it is my responsibility to send you some money for your medicine.
Lagrimas has been calling me about my share of the expenses for your medical treatment for your depression.
What a sickness. It is all a symbol, this sickness of the soul.
You could have been a rich woman who had to have her own psychiatrist or psychotherapist to cure her.
It has been years and years that I did not see you, Mother.
It was in 1985 when I last saw you.
That is more than 20 years ago.
We left when the going was getting rough, when the turmoil that was to shake the whole of the land was beginning to take form and substance.
The regime and its unruly ways assassinated the senator in the tarmac, his pool of blood bathing him, his all-white suit turning crimson as the cameras flashed.
I did not know what was all that.
I knew that you had gone to the other world, the world of spirits and dreams and wild hopes, the dreams of running away some more, of going to America, of going to the land of snow and chocolates and butterball.
The butterball was your favorite.
The caramel candy, you told me once, reminded you so much of your Auntie Madre who would come to your house when you were younger in Dagupan.
She would bring you all the goodies from her convent, the surplus from the benefactors’ gifts, those rich men and women from the gated communities in Manila who would feel guilty during Christmas and thus would bring all their goodies to your Auntie Madre’s convent. The rich, of course, were hoping for some kind of an indulgence for doing that corporal work of mercy.
It was the season of rains and storms and flood but on that August that they killed him, there was the sun shining so bright.
There was some kind of an anachronism here, this death in the bright light of the Manila sun.
A few months after, Lagrimas and I would leave you.
And I would not see you since then, not anyone of you.
Because I could not bear to see you.
I could put together the distance of years separating us.
Twenty years, Mother.
Twenty years of not knowing you, not even hearing your voice.
Because I was afraid, I would get your habit of running away.
Because I was afraid of my fears.
And it is true now, Mother.
I have run away many times.
Even here in Orlando, in this land of my exile, I am running away still.
I am running away from all the memories.
I am running away from all the sorrows.
I am running away from all that which reminds me of my own pains and failures.
I am afraid—and I am afraid of seeing you once again.
Because we are ghosts unto each other, haunting each other, measuring each other in accord with our wild, wild ways.
I cannot bear this, Mother, so I am signing off.
I cannot write “With all my love,”
Rosario
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
August 8, 2004
Orlando, Florida
Mother,
It is now August as I finish this letter. I started this many years ago but I never had the chance to complete it.
It is the season of the storms and wild days as I sit down to collect my thoughts and gather my hopes.
I hear the howling of the winds and the roaring of the waves as if we are here for that end-of-days thing that I had always heard from you when you would curse Father for hitting you hard in the face, the arms, the legs, the chest.
I watched them, the blows.
And I could never forget the suffering you went through and I never understood you.
One day, you just simply went away, you and Lorena.
Anywhere, so father said.
I could have told Father: Mother needed to go anywhere to get away from your inhumanity.
I was bitter but I did not know I was bitter.
I hated Father but I did not know I hated him.
I see now the connections, Mother, the interconnectedness of things.
Each time I felt hatred raging inside me when I was still in Honolulu with that useless husband, I would imagine the scene, get that energy of Father.
I would hit my husband hard, hit him with all my might, hit with anything I could lay my hands on, hit him in places where I felt the raging urge to do so.
And I would curse him the way Father would curse you.
And I would threaten him the way Father threatened you.
Father said to you oftentimes, You cannot run away from me now.
I told my husband, You cannot run away from me now.
Father told you, You run away and I will look for you anywhere and then when I find you, I will bring you back here, your hair tied on the rear of the cart drawn by a carabao. I would let people know that you ran away, ran away to where your freedom led, run away to your man, to your useless husband whose only right to you was that he owned your young heart in the beginning. But now you are mine and no one can ever lay his hand on you anymore.
I told my husband, You run away and I will call the police and tell them you deserted us, you useless bastard and son of a bitch. I will ask for that child support so that you will never be able to get back on your feet as a family man again. You will be financially distressed and I want that to happen to you so no woman can ever be tempted to get near you because you will have no way to support another son.
I had all the scenes when I was young.
Perhaps I was five when I realized Father hit you hard and I knew that Father loved you so.
I could not make two and two together but the days were heady and hard and our life was miserable.
I remember the many typhoons and storms and floods that would visit us in that barrio of Father, the barrio down the foothills, its small brook from the eastern mountains winding down towards the sea in the west.
The brook would temp the hills announcing the seminary of celibates or those who were trying to find God in the strange faith of clerics and missionaries, those habited who had to intone the sacred word every four hours in order to calm their nerves.
On many days, we did not have rice in the bin. But I would dream of angels in the seminary church that you would go to when Josefa died.
Or so I heard from some people’s stories.
As soon as Josefa died, you would wake up early in the morning, put on your best dress, put on the black veil of mourning, and then, with the light of stars giving you direction, go to the dawn mass officiated by the celibates in the hills.
You had your rosary, a black one, and a heirloom from Lola Madre.
I remembered that detail most.
I would look for that rosary with the angel in flight as if you were that angel, Mother.
As if I was that angel as well.
For many Easter Sundays, I wanted to be an angel.
We do not have money for the white gown, Rosario, you would say.
We do not have money for the white crepe paper for your wings.
We do not have money for the white shoes that would match your wings.
I would sulk in the corner.
I would cry in the dark.
I would talk to the angels of the night.
In my dreams, too, I would ask the guardian angel for the angel’s white gown, the angel’s white veil, the angel’s white socks, and the angel’s white shoes.
My guardian angel failed me.
If we had some scoops of rice, you would make a miracle.
You would put all the pearly grains in the bin onto boiling earthen pot and make gruel out of our hope for a good gracious meal.
That was neat, Mother.
If we were lucky, there would be the ginger to taste, some salt to taste, some vetsin to taste.
Ay, I would imagine the breast of a chicken on my bowl.
Or a solitary egg.
Or that fleshy leg of a wild chicken Father would bring home sometimes from the hills where he would gather dried twigs for the earthen stove.
There were days when the stove would be silent and I knew what that meant.
If we had something to partake of, I would see the stove coming alive.
I would watch the fire getting bigger and bigger from a small ember.
I would watch the firewood crackle, as if telling me, Rosario, Rosario, gather your wits.
Those were the days, Mother.
Some days I want to talk to you.
Some days I do not want to talk to you.
But most of the time, I do not want to be bothered by anyone.
That was why I ran away, away from you all, away from the sad memories, away from all that which reminded me of our days of misery and want.
I cannot bear the thought, Mother.
I die soon if I entertained that thought.
I do not want to have anything to do with the past that is why I am here in Orlando.
I am thousand of miles away from Manang Lagrimas and I want that.
I want that distance.
She cannot touch me.
She cannot remind me of anything.
She cannot be another mother to me.
Here I am with my only son trying to live life the best way I can by not having anything to do with anyone of you.
Holler, this is America.
Here, you be your own man.
Here, you cannot be somebody else’s keeper.
I like that idea because it gives me the freedom to run my life the way I want.
No sisters and brothers from own view of things.
I do not even know if it is my responsibility to send you some money for your medicine.
Lagrimas has been calling me about my share of the expenses for your medical treatment for your depression.
What a sickness. It is all a symbol, this sickness of the soul.
You could have been a rich woman who had to have her own psychiatrist or psychotherapist to cure her.
It has been years and years that I did not see you, Mother.
It was in 1985 when I last saw you.
That is more than 20 years ago.
We left when the going was getting rough, when the turmoil that was to shake the whole of the land was beginning to take form and substance.
The regime and its unruly ways assassinated the senator in the tarmac, his pool of blood bathing him, his all-white suit turning crimson as the cameras flashed.
I did not know what was all that.
I knew that you had gone to the other world, the world of spirits and dreams and wild hopes, the dreams of running away some more, of going to America, of going to the land of snow and chocolates and butterball.
The butterball was your favorite.
The caramel candy, you told me once, reminded you so much of your Auntie Madre who would come to your house when you were younger in Dagupan.
She would bring you all the goodies from her convent, the surplus from the benefactors’ gifts, those rich men and women from the gated communities in Manila who would feel guilty during Christmas and thus would bring all their goodies to your Auntie Madre’s convent. The rich, of course, were hoping for some kind of an indulgence for doing that corporal work of mercy.
It was the season of rains and storms and flood but on that August that they killed him, there was the sun shining so bright.
There was some kind of an anachronism here, this death in the bright light of the Manila sun.
A few months after, Lagrimas and I would leave you.
And I would not see you since then, not anyone of you.
Because I could not bear to see you.
I could put together the distance of years separating us.
Twenty years, Mother.
Twenty years of not knowing you, not even hearing your voice.
Because I was afraid, I would get your habit of running away.
Because I was afraid of my fears.
And it is true now, Mother.
I have run away many times.
Even here in Orlando, in this land of my exile, I am running away still.
I am running away from all the memories.
I am running away from all the sorrows.
I am running away from all that which reminds me of my own pains and failures.
I am afraid—and I am afraid of seeing you once again.
Because we are ghosts unto each other, haunting each other, measuring each other in accord with our wild, wild ways.
I cannot bear this, Mother, so I am signing off.
I cannot write “With all my love,”
Rosario
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
MORE AMERICAN THAN AMERICANS,THESE PINOYS IN DA MERIKA
Part of my training as an ethnographer is to understand and describe culture and all those that go with it.
Culture for ethnographers is not something that is frozen in the past, like that penchant for the tinikling as the symbol for being Pinoy.
Culture for ethnographers is the dynamic and living ethos of a people: the way they have lived, the way they now live, the way they imagine themselves how to live.
The basic methodology of the ethnographer is participant observation and observant participation.
These are double frames as well—some epistemic frames through we are able to see the data of experience with kindness and objectivity, with consideration and human understanding.
So when I came to da Merika, I brought with me these tools, these instruments, these intellectual gadgets under the rubric of what we call scholarship and research. Or creative writing if you want some other avenues, perhaps a novel on exilic life?
The moment I set foot in da Merika, I started keeping a journal of my most important experiences as an ethnographer, each journal, with all the important entries, highlighting speakers and narrators, sites and symbols, language and silences, gestures and actions.
In effect, I allowed myself to take part in this play of the possible, the play of possibilities as the ethnographer in me was looking out for hints and clues.
Even at this time, with that training, I can completely recall important conversations and scenes, details and all. Prospero Covar the anthropologist and Zeus Salazar the ethnologist taught me well the rudiments of fact gathering and interpretation.
At the airport in Manila, you see the elementary distinction: those who are trying hard to speak the language of the Americans, with the false accent and the imitated inflection as against those Pinoys who remain unblemished by their exilic life.
At the lobby of the airport alone, you see the binaries—the extreme, the opposites. The TH—the trying hard--as against those who have remained rooted to the ground of their mind and memory.
On one end of the pole is the TH Pinoys, trying without much success to act like Americans; the only thing they can do is execute a bad playacting of the language of the Hollywood kind. Ha, their grammar is bad, unthinkable and here they come with their way of making their huge presence felt. You can only say: Son and daughter of a gun!
On the other end are the many Pinoys who have remained rooted to the experience of being Pinoys even in a faraway land like America.
The cultural categories come to you easily and you remember the books you have read about how to interpret all this clues and hints.
Spradley comes to mind easily. Covar. Salazar. Enriquez. All the teachers who have taught you how to be still, take your cues and commit them to memory.
Or jot them.
You remember as well the insistent nationalism of Lumbera and Melendrez, teachers and eventually colleagues who showed you the way to philipinology in a liberating way.
So the black organizer comes in handy—or the back of a mega lotto ticket you bought in a hurry in one dilapidated lugawan in downtown Cubao.
The ticket, of course, was that one shot to fame and fortune in pesos before you called it quits and say, hanggang sa muli.
And then, of course, like the rest of them Pinoys in the dreamland of dollars, you imagine the green bucks coming your way, welcoming you with open arms and saying, “Come, come, ex-future countryman and citizen come and take me for all you care.”
You jot down all the way the Pinoys who are more Americans than the way Americans conduct themselves.
Like the foreign missionaries you lived with for a long time, the lessons come in handy. The Pinoys who became clerics and were trained under the Italians became more Italians than the Italians. It was fake and phony—and affected.
You saw it coming even in your early years of cultural immersion, this pretense, this masquerade: “Ay, di na ako marunong mag-Ilokano, mag-Tagalog, mag-Bisaya. I cannot relate any longer with the language coz been here for quite a time. Speak English to me, please! It has become the language of my heart and soul, this English of my new country.”
In your younger years, this could have been the Italian language you were forced to learn during your spare time in order to communicate to the Italian confreres who refused the learn any of the languages in the Philippines except English.
You learned your Italiano mal hablado that way: by trying to come to terms with assimilation and its small truths and small falsities.
You did not think of Rome and the Vatican in your missionary life.
You thought of the village in Gumamugam you dreamed of going and spending your entire life.
When you get to America, you are shocked: many of the Pinoys who have made it here—“made it” is a loose term to mean they who have put in some amount of dollars in their pockets by dint of hard work or sometimes by good gracious good luck—and flaunt what have they come to. They make it sure you understand their good fortune by saying, “I will sue you if you do not deliver!”
You can only chuckle in disbelief. The first clue to the relational among the Pinoys in the United States is the change of language and the linguistic claim: “I sue you!”
The Pinoy acting like Americano adopts a litigious view of things: he sues/she sues to get across. This is the way for him/her to demonstrate his/power and to tell to all and sundry that he/she has arrived—that the pinnacle of immigrant glory is at his/her fingertip.
Another of those kind tells you in a less polite, less respectful terms that he/she will destroy you: “I have been here in America long before you came and this is my first time to be treated like this, you bagong salta!”
There is the binary, the great divide. There is where we can locate the two kinds of Pinoys in the United States.
Or perhaps there are others of another kind.
We get the ethnographer’s field notebook next time. They now number 30 in the two years he has been here.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
Culture for ethnographers is not something that is frozen in the past, like that penchant for the tinikling as the symbol for being Pinoy.
Culture for ethnographers is the dynamic and living ethos of a people: the way they have lived, the way they now live, the way they imagine themselves how to live.
The basic methodology of the ethnographer is participant observation and observant participation.
These are double frames as well—some epistemic frames through we are able to see the data of experience with kindness and objectivity, with consideration and human understanding.
So when I came to da Merika, I brought with me these tools, these instruments, these intellectual gadgets under the rubric of what we call scholarship and research. Or creative writing if you want some other avenues, perhaps a novel on exilic life?
The moment I set foot in da Merika, I started keeping a journal of my most important experiences as an ethnographer, each journal, with all the important entries, highlighting speakers and narrators, sites and symbols, language and silences, gestures and actions.
In effect, I allowed myself to take part in this play of the possible, the play of possibilities as the ethnographer in me was looking out for hints and clues.
Even at this time, with that training, I can completely recall important conversations and scenes, details and all. Prospero Covar the anthropologist and Zeus Salazar the ethnologist taught me well the rudiments of fact gathering and interpretation.
At the airport in Manila, you see the elementary distinction: those who are trying hard to speak the language of the Americans, with the false accent and the imitated inflection as against those Pinoys who remain unblemished by their exilic life.
At the lobby of the airport alone, you see the binaries—the extreme, the opposites. The TH—the trying hard--as against those who have remained rooted to the ground of their mind and memory.
On one end of the pole is the TH Pinoys, trying without much success to act like Americans; the only thing they can do is execute a bad playacting of the language of the Hollywood kind. Ha, their grammar is bad, unthinkable and here they come with their way of making their huge presence felt. You can only say: Son and daughter of a gun!
On the other end are the many Pinoys who have remained rooted to the experience of being Pinoys even in a faraway land like America.
The cultural categories come to you easily and you remember the books you have read about how to interpret all this clues and hints.
Spradley comes to mind easily. Covar. Salazar. Enriquez. All the teachers who have taught you how to be still, take your cues and commit them to memory.
Or jot them.
You remember as well the insistent nationalism of Lumbera and Melendrez, teachers and eventually colleagues who showed you the way to philipinology in a liberating way.
So the black organizer comes in handy—or the back of a mega lotto ticket you bought in a hurry in one dilapidated lugawan in downtown Cubao.
The ticket, of course, was that one shot to fame and fortune in pesos before you called it quits and say, hanggang sa muli.
And then, of course, like the rest of them Pinoys in the dreamland of dollars, you imagine the green bucks coming your way, welcoming you with open arms and saying, “Come, come, ex-future countryman and citizen come and take me for all you care.”
You jot down all the way the Pinoys who are more Americans than the way Americans conduct themselves.
Like the foreign missionaries you lived with for a long time, the lessons come in handy. The Pinoys who became clerics and were trained under the Italians became more Italians than the Italians. It was fake and phony—and affected.
You saw it coming even in your early years of cultural immersion, this pretense, this masquerade: “Ay, di na ako marunong mag-Ilokano, mag-Tagalog, mag-Bisaya. I cannot relate any longer with the language coz been here for quite a time. Speak English to me, please! It has become the language of my heart and soul, this English of my new country.”
In your younger years, this could have been the Italian language you were forced to learn during your spare time in order to communicate to the Italian confreres who refused the learn any of the languages in the Philippines except English.
You learned your Italiano mal hablado that way: by trying to come to terms with assimilation and its small truths and small falsities.
You did not think of Rome and the Vatican in your missionary life.
You thought of the village in Gumamugam you dreamed of going and spending your entire life.
When you get to America, you are shocked: many of the Pinoys who have made it here—“made it” is a loose term to mean they who have put in some amount of dollars in their pockets by dint of hard work or sometimes by good gracious good luck—and flaunt what have they come to. They make it sure you understand their good fortune by saying, “I will sue you if you do not deliver!”
You can only chuckle in disbelief. The first clue to the relational among the Pinoys in the United States is the change of language and the linguistic claim: “I sue you!”
The Pinoy acting like Americano adopts a litigious view of things: he sues/she sues to get across. This is the way for him/her to demonstrate his/power and to tell to all and sundry that he/she has arrived—that the pinnacle of immigrant glory is at his/her fingertip.
Another of those kind tells you in a less polite, less respectful terms that he/she will destroy you: “I have been here in America long before you came and this is my first time to be treated like this, you bagong salta!”
There is the binary, the great divide. There is where we can locate the two kinds of Pinoys in the United States.
Or perhaps there are others of another kind.
We get the ethnographer’s field notebook next time. They now number 30 in the two years he has been here.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov 2005
THE CONTINUING VULNERABILITIES OF ASIA
The question of underdevelopment and poverty in Asia, as is the case of the other nation-states belonging to what has been termed as “South” remains a question that is rooted in the basic lack of access to resource ownership and to the means to generate and create wealth.
In many rural economies, for instance, a land resource is still a basic question, with some economies peaking to a scandalous proportion: 25 percent of the land resource is owned by the 75 percent of the people while 75 percent is owned by the 25 percent economic and political elite.
This is a trap that has beset many of the economies of Asia.
We add this to the lack of access to credit and the basic services and we have a tripod of problems that are explosive in nature, a social bomb that is ready to explode, and a social volcano that is ready to erupt anytime.
With these as the fundamental issues into analyzing what makes Asia sick, with about two-thirds of the world’s poor in its fold.
We have a trope here: in the bosom of a poor homeland are the citizens with not many choices except to go find the next excuse to be able to come to terms with the punishment of poverty.
In some instances, people turn to anything that can help them make sense out of this senselessness and non-sense.
People can turn to religion to imagine a better world.
People can turn to charismatic leaders that rally them into causes that address their disappointments and frustrations.
People can turn to dictators and despots just to make them see that to dream of the good life is possible.
Because religion can be instrumental to accounting self and social redemption and to consoling oneself that, indeed, life is just a passing fancy, that everything is magic, that the good life will be had in the afterlife because one has gone through life with grace and grandeur of spirit despite material depravity.
Because the charismatic leaders know how to extrapolate the endless possibilities of a political promise of creating a new society that is just and fair to all.
Because dictators and despots know how to capitalize on fear and terror, thus, making the subjects cowering and careful not to go against the wishes of the powerful and the invulnerable.
In all these, we see a collective vulnerability that is rooted in the incapacity of Asian economies to offer something better to the people.
In many accounts, the areas where there is much poverty are the very areas where the food is sourced because that is where the land is and not in the blighted cities doomed by cement and concrete.
But then, this is the reality in Asia: the many poor, the nameless poor, the countless poor, the poorest of the poor—they are all in the rural areas where land awaits for cultivation, where the plains and valleys are open for the tilling, and where the seas and rivers are always in their generous mood to offer something bountiful to the one who has the means to go and explore its rich resource.
The problem is a circle—and it is vicious.
The problem is also linked with the issue of human security.
At the 2005 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the Busan Declaration was univocal on the need for the 21 economies of Asia and the Pacific to address the question of terrorism.
While there could be other causes of terrorism, there is a link between the perceived causes of injustice in both national and international scope.
When more developed economies dominate other economies, this brings about a lopsided relationship.
Dominant economies may be perceived as the culprit—or the agents of international injustices.
Take trade, for instance.
When other economies, while signatory to a free trade agreement, are not given the same chance to play fair and square in the trade of goods and commodities, there is something unruly here.
The key in coming up with a credible human security agenda is to address the bases of Asia-Pacific insecurity.
On a national scope, the tripod of problems needs to be looked into with clear and committed insight.
In the regional scope, the question of solidarity among these economies—their term is “cooperation”—must be put to the test always by fiercely guarding the commitment to a free exchange of goods, commodities, and services.
Terrorism breeds on poverty.
Terrorism feeds on misery.
Terrorism is a child of national, regional, and global injustice and inequality.
For the Asia-Pacific region to get past—and graduate from--these continuing vulnerabilities, the leaders must sit down to work and pool their resources to create a better, more humane region.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov. 2005
In many rural economies, for instance, a land resource is still a basic question, with some economies peaking to a scandalous proportion: 25 percent of the land resource is owned by the 75 percent of the people while 75 percent is owned by the 25 percent economic and political elite.
This is a trap that has beset many of the economies of Asia.
We add this to the lack of access to credit and the basic services and we have a tripod of problems that are explosive in nature, a social bomb that is ready to explode, and a social volcano that is ready to erupt anytime.
With these as the fundamental issues into analyzing what makes Asia sick, with about two-thirds of the world’s poor in its fold.
We have a trope here: in the bosom of a poor homeland are the citizens with not many choices except to go find the next excuse to be able to come to terms with the punishment of poverty.
In some instances, people turn to anything that can help them make sense out of this senselessness and non-sense.
People can turn to religion to imagine a better world.
People can turn to charismatic leaders that rally them into causes that address their disappointments and frustrations.
People can turn to dictators and despots just to make them see that to dream of the good life is possible.
Because religion can be instrumental to accounting self and social redemption and to consoling oneself that, indeed, life is just a passing fancy, that everything is magic, that the good life will be had in the afterlife because one has gone through life with grace and grandeur of spirit despite material depravity.
Because the charismatic leaders know how to extrapolate the endless possibilities of a political promise of creating a new society that is just and fair to all.
Because dictators and despots know how to capitalize on fear and terror, thus, making the subjects cowering and careful not to go against the wishes of the powerful and the invulnerable.
In all these, we see a collective vulnerability that is rooted in the incapacity of Asian economies to offer something better to the people.
In many accounts, the areas where there is much poverty are the very areas where the food is sourced because that is where the land is and not in the blighted cities doomed by cement and concrete.
But then, this is the reality in Asia: the many poor, the nameless poor, the countless poor, the poorest of the poor—they are all in the rural areas where land awaits for cultivation, where the plains and valleys are open for the tilling, and where the seas and rivers are always in their generous mood to offer something bountiful to the one who has the means to go and explore its rich resource.
The problem is a circle—and it is vicious.
The problem is also linked with the issue of human security.
At the 2005 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the Busan Declaration was univocal on the need for the 21 economies of Asia and the Pacific to address the question of terrorism.
While there could be other causes of terrorism, there is a link between the perceived causes of injustice in both national and international scope.
When more developed economies dominate other economies, this brings about a lopsided relationship.
Dominant economies may be perceived as the culprit—or the agents of international injustices.
Take trade, for instance.
When other economies, while signatory to a free trade agreement, are not given the same chance to play fair and square in the trade of goods and commodities, there is something unruly here.
The key in coming up with a credible human security agenda is to address the bases of Asia-Pacific insecurity.
On a national scope, the tripod of problems needs to be looked into with clear and committed insight.
In the regional scope, the question of solidarity among these economies—their term is “cooperation”—must be put to the test always by fiercely guarding the commitment to a free exchange of goods, commodities, and services.
Terrorism breeds on poverty.
Terrorism feeds on misery.
Terrorism is a child of national, regional, and global injustice and inequality.
For the Asia-Pacific region to get past—and graduate from--these continuing vulnerabilities, the leaders must sit down to work and pool their resources to create a better, more humane region.
Pub, INQ, V1N22, Nov. 2005
TEST CASE
The case of alleged rape of a Filipino woman by six American military personnel, if not handled justly and fairly, will become another national tragedy for the Philippines.
This tragedy may open new wounds to the detriment of Philippine-American relations.
The rape story begins in “balikatan” or “war games.” That beginning came in roughly and now, in midstream, the story is a bit ugly, with the future of the rape victim dashed for a reason that has something to do with violating the basic right of others.
The rape story has national and international repercussions. It is symbolic of so many things including the conduct of American military personnel in other countries.
The case is clearly a test case for the Visiting Forces Agreement signed in 1998 by the government of the Philippines and the government of the United States of America.
Early on, with the rejection by the Philippine Senate in 1991 of the military bases agreement that lasted for one hundred years, the naval and air bases of the United States in the Philippines were also rejected.
Many Filipinos thought that with the Americans leaving the country for good, the country would be an open territory for gobbling up by other ambitious and imperialist nation-states.
Richard Gordon was the first advocate of this reasoning. He painted fear. When the Americans left, he became one of the first government leaders to prove that the fear and paranoia that went with the prospect of seeing the American military leave were baseless.
In 1998, at the time that the Philippines was celebrating its 100 years of independence from colonial rule, then President Joseph Estrada signed the Visiting Forces Agreement that paved the way for joint exercises between the US and Philippine military personnel.
Francisco Nemenzo, in a 1998 lecture at the National Defense College of the Philippines, cited three reasons why the VFA was flawed: (a) it is an affront to the Philippine Constitution; (b) it grants territorial rights to Americans; and (c) it can involve (Filipinos) in unnecessary international conflicts.
The rape case involves in particular to the way the question of extraterritoriality is factored in addressing the case.
While the question of proof of guilt is for the courts to decide, the implications of the case to Filipino in the Philippines and Filipino immigrants in the United States are far-reaching.
Basic to this is the question of Philippine sovereignty.
This one is a big, huge, and delicate term to define given the rich and tangled history of Philippine-American relations.
Philippine foreign policy comes into question here; American foreign policy particularly with respect to the VFA will come into careful and critical scrutiny.
Already, the tales of woe and will power have become tangled.
Some groups are putting some import of the fact that the incoming US Ambassador to the Philippines will be, for the first time, a woman.
The alleged rape victim is a woman. The expectation of some groups is sisterhood and political correctness.
How the American government will face squarely the facts of the case of its military personnel will come into focus as the whole world watches for the swift resolution of the problem.
Because the United States and the Philippines share a common history, this problem requiring reasonable resolution becomes more crucial at this time.
With the US still in the forefront of assisting Iraq in evolving a democratic way of life at the cost of more than 2000 lives, the US cannot afford another nuisance.
The only way to get out of the problem is for both countries to be honest, fair, and just. The conduct of a fair trial is paramount here.
The only way for them to patch the crack of their relationship is to come to a bargaining table insofar as this rape case is concerned.
The only way for them is to permit justice to run its course.
Justice is what makes friendship more real because the friends take each other as equals and not as patron and client.
The treating of each other as equals—this is the lesson that Americans and Filipinos alike can learn from this test case of the VFA.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
This tragedy may open new wounds to the detriment of Philippine-American relations.
The rape story begins in “balikatan” or “war games.” That beginning came in roughly and now, in midstream, the story is a bit ugly, with the future of the rape victim dashed for a reason that has something to do with violating the basic right of others.
The rape story has national and international repercussions. It is symbolic of so many things including the conduct of American military personnel in other countries.
The case is clearly a test case for the Visiting Forces Agreement signed in 1998 by the government of the Philippines and the government of the United States of America.
Early on, with the rejection by the Philippine Senate in 1991 of the military bases agreement that lasted for one hundred years, the naval and air bases of the United States in the Philippines were also rejected.
Many Filipinos thought that with the Americans leaving the country for good, the country would be an open territory for gobbling up by other ambitious and imperialist nation-states.
Richard Gordon was the first advocate of this reasoning. He painted fear. When the Americans left, he became one of the first government leaders to prove that the fear and paranoia that went with the prospect of seeing the American military leave were baseless.
In 1998, at the time that the Philippines was celebrating its 100 years of independence from colonial rule, then President Joseph Estrada signed the Visiting Forces Agreement that paved the way for joint exercises between the US and Philippine military personnel.
Francisco Nemenzo, in a 1998 lecture at the National Defense College of the Philippines, cited three reasons why the VFA was flawed: (a) it is an affront to the Philippine Constitution; (b) it grants territorial rights to Americans; and (c) it can involve (Filipinos) in unnecessary international conflicts.
The rape case involves in particular to the way the question of extraterritoriality is factored in addressing the case.
While the question of proof of guilt is for the courts to decide, the implications of the case to Filipino in the Philippines and Filipino immigrants in the United States are far-reaching.
Basic to this is the question of Philippine sovereignty.
This one is a big, huge, and delicate term to define given the rich and tangled history of Philippine-American relations.
Philippine foreign policy comes into question here; American foreign policy particularly with respect to the VFA will come into careful and critical scrutiny.
Already, the tales of woe and will power have become tangled.
Some groups are putting some import of the fact that the incoming US Ambassador to the Philippines will be, for the first time, a woman.
The alleged rape victim is a woman. The expectation of some groups is sisterhood and political correctness.
How the American government will face squarely the facts of the case of its military personnel will come into focus as the whole world watches for the swift resolution of the problem.
Because the United States and the Philippines share a common history, this problem requiring reasonable resolution becomes more crucial at this time.
With the US still in the forefront of assisting Iraq in evolving a democratic way of life at the cost of more than 2000 lives, the US cannot afford another nuisance.
The only way to get out of the problem is for both countries to be honest, fair, and just. The conduct of a fair trial is paramount here.
The only way for them to patch the crack of their relationship is to come to a bargaining table insofar as this rape case is concerned.
The only way for them is to permit justice to run its course.
Justice is what makes friendship more real because the friends take each other as equals and not as patron and client.
The treating of each other as equals—this is the lesson that Americans and Filipinos alike can learn from this test case of the VFA.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
REDEMPTION--Chapter Three
“Redemption” tackles the life of five daughters and a mother. Two of the daughters are in the United States; the three are left in the home country trying as much as they could to live life in earnest and in the raw. All the five daughters carry with them the wounds that precede redemption: the wounds of life, the wounds of memory, the wounds of family, the wounds of relationships, the wound of discovering the rugged path to self-discovery and healing.
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
Dear Ditas,
Even as you try to keep fighting on with your life as an unwed mother, I try as much to hang on in here as well.
I am your mother, true. However, I have my demons as well. And when they do come and visit me, I cease to be your mother. I become helpless. I become your daughter.
From where I am, I know I need to do something urgent: I have to keep on taming them, these demons that spring from so many wells within me.
You cry in your corner.
By all means, cry.
Shed all the tears.
I did that.
For many nights, I did that when the soldiers came to rape my mother.
I was her child during war, the war of my generation.
I was two and I saw how two young Japanese soldiers grabbed her with all the might and force that I have never seen in my lifetime.
She was breastfeeding me when they came one young evening. At two, I did not know what rape was. I came to realize that that was rape when I became older.
I know only about the bad people with their shining bayonets, their helmets and the strange sounds they uttered. I heard of “Banzai!” many times, a sound whose meaning, until now, I refuse to know.
I knew about the soldiers who raped my mother on the roadside.
The formed a queue.
One by one, they piled up to feast on my mother’s body now splattered on the dark earth of my father’s coffee and cocoa plantation.
My father has gone away to help drive away the enemy.
The last time I saw him was a long time ago, he with his khaki and his boots, and his bolo. I did not see his gun. But I thought that at that time that he asked my mother her blessing, they both cried.
My father said, “I am doing this for our children. For the land. For our future.”
Mother said, “You do not have to go away.”
Father said, “For my peace of mind.”
Mother said, “I do not know how to raise your children by myself. I will die before you know it.”
Father said, “You do not say that. We have goodness in us. The Lord is not asleep.”
Mother said, “You cannot leave us by ourselves.”
Father said, “I know that you know that I cannot. But I have obligations. Each man must face his own war.”
Mother said, “You have children.”
Father said, “Other soldiers have their own children.”
Mother said, “Sige, fight your own war. We will find a way to live. May the Lord Creator bless you.”
And then my memory of the scene faded.
I see the Japanese soldier on top of mother’s naked body. Almost.
Her duanaig has been ripped off.
Her long hair is the only covering of her breast, the same breast that gave me food.
All these things I see in my dreams.
The dreams did not come to me when I was younger.
The dreams started coming when I began to see the light of day, when I began to understand, bit by bit, the meaning of sorrow.
I do not know if father knew what had happened to father.
He grew cold after the war.
Sometimes I would see him spading the earth of her coffee and cocoa plantation, the manner of spading a ritual.
Off onto the earth, the spade, its point seeking its bottom.
At times, the rays of the sun would compete with him and outsmarted him in seeking the heart of the earth out of the hole he dug.
In the whole, he would put in all his sorrows because of the war and despite the war.
Mother kept her silence.
She knew that in my silence, I knew that the soldiers raped her.
I was two at that time. The spirits and the demons taught me of the ways of the older people and they brought me back to that past that I kept in my mind.
I had the spirits with me. I had the demons in my soul, those entities that talk to me about the possibilities of living the good life.
I was scared of the spirits.
I would get garlic and a pinch of salt, the fine one from the Ilocos even when we were already in Angadan to farm Father’s coffee and cocoa plantation.
Having learned to sew from Bai Regina one summer when I was seven, I cut a piece of cloth from a rag and made a pouch for the garlic and the salt.
I always carried the pouch wherever I went.
I needed to drive the spirits.
I needed to drive the demons.
I needed peace and quiet and not the rambunctious life I have with the entities with no names.
No. They told me their names.
But I was poor with language.
So I never got to distinguish who was who.
There was one who told me about his name.
I thought that he was handsome. He walked the walk of the confident man who knew what he wanted and who knew himself.
I got to like him.
And then he was gone.
I looked for him in the fields.
I looked for him in my dreams.
I looked for him in the waters that flow through the cocoa and coffee plantation of father.
I looked for him in the rays of the sun and the moon and the light.
I looked for him in all the songs that I head from Bai Regina.
I looked for him in my memory.
I looked for him in the past.
But he never came. He never showed himself to me again.
And so I had to look for him in the faces of the men that came into my life.
I had to.
That was my salvation. To see him again in whatever way I could.
I thought that I could not live life, the good life, without him.
The demons urged me on.
The spirits egged me on.
Demons, spirits—all wanted me to go look for him in the valleys and mountains and stories and language of the days and the nights that passed by as if these were just illusion.
Some kind of a magic.
Some kind of phantasm that I needed to exorcise.
Purge.
Take out from my system.
Until I met your father, he who had those round eyes and sweet smile.
He had loved mo so.
I had loved him so.
But that was in the past.
Even in that love, the demons and spirits urged me on.
And I ran away with other men as if to run away was the only way to exorcise the ghosts lurking in all the nooks around, the ghosts residing in me, the ghosts that stole my spirit and that took hold of my name.
If Ria had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Lagrimas had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Lorena had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Rosario had told you about her hated of me, I would not blame her.
For in the shadows was my soldier. He came from the dark, from some place I do not know and remember. Then he conquered me.
One night, near the river that forked to the left of the valley from where you see the cocoa and coffee plantation, I met up with my soldier.
We were to talk about the revolution he and the other comrades were waging in the countryside.
Father was with them, the rebels who mouthed slogans against Marcos and the imperialists.
Father gave them revolutionary money so the comrades would be able to further the cause of the revolution.
Father needed to clean his conscience. He needed to purge it of the scenes of the two children his truck run over in Dagupan. He would dream of these children becoming soldiers and he would go with them, teach them the ways of the revolution, teach them how to read the stars and the winds and the howling of dogs to hint the coming of the enemy.
With the force of the wild winds from the north, he ravished me like a wild boar.
I resisted in the beginning. His strong arms were like the wild winds that roared like the storms.
I felt his heaviness that made me light, so light I was with the angels, the good demons, and the good spirits.
I welcomed him, the soldier that would inaugurate my sad and sorrowful life.
Then I had you, Rosario, and Lorena.
Now I see how the heavens had changed. I am here, in this old and rickety house, with my sad and sorrowful memories.
I would not have loved less. I gave love a chance to all the wilds winds that came caressing my lost soul.
I have yet to find my soul, balasangko. Help me pray that I will have peace.
With all my love,
Nanang
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
Dear Ditas,
Even as you try to keep fighting on with your life as an unwed mother, I try as much to hang on in here as well.
I am your mother, true. However, I have my demons as well. And when they do come and visit me, I cease to be your mother. I become helpless. I become your daughter.
From where I am, I know I need to do something urgent: I have to keep on taming them, these demons that spring from so many wells within me.
You cry in your corner.
By all means, cry.
Shed all the tears.
I did that.
For many nights, I did that when the soldiers came to rape my mother.
I was her child during war, the war of my generation.
I was two and I saw how two young Japanese soldiers grabbed her with all the might and force that I have never seen in my lifetime.
She was breastfeeding me when they came one young evening. At two, I did not know what rape was. I came to realize that that was rape when I became older.
I know only about the bad people with their shining bayonets, their helmets and the strange sounds they uttered. I heard of “Banzai!” many times, a sound whose meaning, until now, I refuse to know.
I knew about the soldiers who raped my mother on the roadside.
The formed a queue.
One by one, they piled up to feast on my mother’s body now splattered on the dark earth of my father’s coffee and cocoa plantation.
My father has gone away to help drive away the enemy.
The last time I saw him was a long time ago, he with his khaki and his boots, and his bolo. I did not see his gun. But I thought that at that time that he asked my mother her blessing, they both cried.
My father said, “I am doing this for our children. For the land. For our future.”
Mother said, “You do not have to go away.”
Father said, “For my peace of mind.”
Mother said, “I do not know how to raise your children by myself. I will die before you know it.”
Father said, “You do not say that. We have goodness in us. The Lord is not asleep.”
Mother said, “You cannot leave us by ourselves.”
Father said, “I know that you know that I cannot. But I have obligations. Each man must face his own war.”
Mother said, “You have children.”
Father said, “Other soldiers have their own children.”
Mother said, “Sige, fight your own war. We will find a way to live. May the Lord Creator bless you.”
And then my memory of the scene faded.
I see the Japanese soldier on top of mother’s naked body. Almost.
Her duanaig has been ripped off.
Her long hair is the only covering of her breast, the same breast that gave me food.
All these things I see in my dreams.
The dreams did not come to me when I was younger.
The dreams started coming when I began to see the light of day, when I began to understand, bit by bit, the meaning of sorrow.
I do not know if father knew what had happened to father.
He grew cold after the war.
Sometimes I would see him spading the earth of her coffee and cocoa plantation, the manner of spading a ritual.
Off onto the earth, the spade, its point seeking its bottom.
At times, the rays of the sun would compete with him and outsmarted him in seeking the heart of the earth out of the hole he dug.
In the whole, he would put in all his sorrows because of the war and despite the war.
Mother kept her silence.
She knew that in my silence, I knew that the soldiers raped her.
I was two at that time. The spirits and the demons taught me of the ways of the older people and they brought me back to that past that I kept in my mind.
I had the spirits with me. I had the demons in my soul, those entities that talk to me about the possibilities of living the good life.
I was scared of the spirits.
I would get garlic and a pinch of salt, the fine one from the Ilocos even when we were already in Angadan to farm Father’s coffee and cocoa plantation.
Having learned to sew from Bai Regina one summer when I was seven, I cut a piece of cloth from a rag and made a pouch for the garlic and the salt.
I always carried the pouch wherever I went.
I needed to drive the spirits.
I needed to drive the demons.
I needed peace and quiet and not the rambunctious life I have with the entities with no names.
No. They told me their names.
But I was poor with language.
So I never got to distinguish who was who.
There was one who told me about his name.
I thought that he was handsome. He walked the walk of the confident man who knew what he wanted and who knew himself.
I got to like him.
And then he was gone.
I looked for him in the fields.
I looked for him in my dreams.
I looked for him in the waters that flow through the cocoa and coffee plantation of father.
I looked for him in the rays of the sun and the moon and the light.
I looked for him in all the songs that I head from Bai Regina.
I looked for him in my memory.
I looked for him in the past.
But he never came. He never showed himself to me again.
And so I had to look for him in the faces of the men that came into my life.
I had to.
That was my salvation. To see him again in whatever way I could.
I thought that I could not live life, the good life, without him.
The demons urged me on.
The spirits egged me on.
Demons, spirits—all wanted me to go look for him in the valleys and mountains and stories and language of the days and the nights that passed by as if these were just illusion.
Some kind of a magic.
Some kind of phantasm that I needed to exorcise.
Purge.
Take out from my system.
Until I met your father, he who had those round eyes and sweet smile.
He had loved mo so.
I had loved him so.
But that was in the past.
Even in that love, the demons and spirits urged me on.
And I ran away with other men as if to run away was the only way to exorcise the ghosts lurking in all the nooks around, the ghosts residing in me, the ghosts that stole my spirit and that took hold of my name.
If Ria had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Lagrimas had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Lorena had told you about her hatred of me, I would not blame her.
If Rosario had told you about her hated of me, I would not blame her.
For in the shadows was my soldier. He came from the dark, from some place I do not know and remember. Then he conquered me.
One night, near the river that forked to the left of the valley from where you see the cocoa and coffee plantation, I met up with my soldier.
We were to talk about the revolution he and the other comrades were waging in the countryside.
Father was with them, the rebels who mouthed slogans against Marcos and the imperialists.
Father gave them revolutionary money so the comrades would be able to further the cause of the revolution.
Father needed to clean his conscience. He needed to purge it of the scenes of the two children his truck run over in Dagupan. He would dream of these children becoming soldiers and he would go with them, teach them the ways of the revolution, teach them how to read the stars and the winds and the howling of dogs to hint the coming of the enemy.
With the force of the wild winds from the north, he ravished me like a wild boar.
I resisted in the beginning. His strong arms were like the wild winds that roared like the storms.
I felt his heaviness that made me light, so light I was with the angels, the good demons, and the good spirits.
I welcomed him, the soldier that would inaugurate my sad and sorrowful life.
Then I had you, Rosario, and Lorena.
Now I see how the heavens had changed. I am here, in this old and rickety house, with my sad and sorrowful memories.
I would not have loved less. I gave love a chance to all the wilds winds that came caressing my lost soul.
I have yet to find my soul, balasangko. Help me pray that I will have peace.
With all my love,
Nanang
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
RESISTING THE RUSES OF RAPE
There is a way by which we can look at, in a new light, the socio-political dynamic of rape especially when we speak of how nation-states treat their own people and in the way they treat other nation-states.
The recent events in the Philippines come to mind here.
The alleged perpetrators are American military servicemen out to help out their Filipino counterparts in what is dubbed as joint military exercises that, in many ways, are all aimed at making the Filipino servicemen more combat-ready even as they teach their US counterparts some techniques of surviving in the wild and some Tagalog language that begins and ends in “Kumusta ka, babaeng maganda?”
Already, we see the players in this latest of social drama that involves two countries with a history of relations that date back more than a hundred years.
We watch with terror and surprise as we witness the initial stages of resolving the issue. The plot thickens even as some of the Philippine leaders mouth nonsense about what to do.
Even in the ancient times, rape has been seen as a play of power and the players come into this play in an unequal footing.
The raped had always been less powerful, if not totally powerless.
There is a play of the symbolic here as we scan the pages of recent history.
For here, in these pages, are the tropes that relate to rape as symptomatic of the malady that befalls upon peoples and nations that are subjected to the unevenness of power.
Wars authored by other countries, for instance, had almost always included rape as a component in that systemic act of despoiling and destroying peoples and their cultures, minds and memory, civilizations and the collective capability to resist.
The raped people are the same as the individually raped victim.
Shame comes about—the shame that wreaks havoc on self-esteem.
Many of those outside the tragic drama of despoiling tend to blame the victim for what had happened.
Some people, out of callousness, may even say that “the victim had it coming” believing that in uttering that statement, their self-righteousness will right the wrong that had been done.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, for instance, takes on new meaning when this is read in the context of war waged against, say, despots and dictators.
There are key questions that come into play even as we speak of the abuses and atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein and his regime against his own people.
The question of liberating peoples is of paramount import.
Any act that is antithetical to that aim invalidates any legitimate claim to helping people redeem themselves and restore their honor as a result of their being systematically raped by their very own leaders.
A review of the history of the concept and reality of rape gives us a clue.
The Latin word rapere offers on insight on what rape had been—on what rape continues to be.
The dictionary meanings are instructive: to seize, to take away by force. Webster’s does not fail us in accounting what this rapere thing is all about.
To strip.
To rob.
To strip of belongings.
To strip of possessions.
To strip of value.
And then some others: to pillage, to ravage.
To plunder.
To abuse.
To despoil.
To loot.
The correlatives are clear: rapist and raped.
Abuser and abused.
Destroyer and destroyed.
Plunderer and plundered.
Despoiler and despoiled.
Looter and looted.
Pillager and pillaged.
We see the images—and they shock us.
In one account, Austin App has talked about the “mass rape of German women at the end of World War II” in his book Ravishing the Women of Conquered Europe. App documents the accounts of witnesses including the rape of nuns in a convent, many of them eventually ending up pregnant.
In James Yin and Shi Young’s The Rape of Nanking, the Japanese invaders raped 80,000 women and girls in three months from December 1937 to March 1938. Yin and Young talk of the savagery that happened: “thousands were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disemboweled.”
We can only imagine here the human capacity to destroy—and that capacity to destroy humanity itself. We are searching here for that human capacity to create.
If we go by the tropes of rape, we can talk about forms of violence that have been inflicted upon others, upon peoples, upon communities.
In these many forms of violence, rape is not an individual act even it may be perpetrated by an individual. There is a ground here—individual as well as collective—which makes rape happens.
We then can talk about cultural rape.
We then can talk about what other authors call “rape of history” when the civilization and memory of a people are systematically wiped out—defaced and erased are the key concepts here—in order to make them zombies and robots.
The greatest and gravest mistake that could happen to the raped is when the raped begins to like it because the conditioning for the liking becomes effective.
The promise of money is one form of a conditioning when the raped is poor and powerless and financially incapacitated.
Resisting millions of pesos and the seductions of the shining silver becomes difficult. “Nasira ka na, hindi na mababago ‘yan. Tanggapin mo na ang pera. May puhunan ka pa,” some people pretending as the sage would say.
We remember one Filipino diplomat giving his advice to overseas Filipino workers, many of them women: “If you cannot resist it, enjoy it.”
The bad and evil pragmatic way of looking at how rape is to be resolved emboldens more and more the rapist and invests upon him the power to imagine the next victim.
The cycle continues if this happens.
This is where resistance is necessary by unmasking the terrible truths that attend to each rape whether we speak of individuals or gangs raping others or countries plundering other countries because they have a democratic message to tell.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
The recent events in the Philippines come to mind here.
The alleged perpetrators are American military servicemen out to help out their Filipino counterparts in what is dubbed as joint military exercises that, in many ways, are all aimed at making the Filipino servicemen more combat-ready even as they teach their US counterparts some techniques of surviving in the wild and some Tagalog language that begins and ends in “Kumusta ka, babaeng maganda?”
Already, we see the players in this latest of social drama that involves two countries with a history of relations that date back more than a hundred years.
We watch with terror and surprise as we witness the initial stages of resolving the issue. The plot thickens even as some of the Philippine leaders mouth nonsense about what to do.
Even in the ancient times, rape has been seen as a play of power and the players come into this play in an unequal footing.
The raped had always been less powerful, if not totally powerless.
There is a play of the symbolic here as we scan the pages of recent history.
For here, in these pages, are the tropes that relate to rape as symptomatic of the malady that befalls upon peoples and nations that are subjected to the unevenness of power.
Wars authored by other countries, for instance, had almost always included rape as a component in that systemic act of despoiling and destroying peoples and their cultures, minds and memory, civilizations and the collective capability to resist.
The raped people are the same as the individually raped victim.
Shame comes about—the shame that wreaks havoc on self-esteem.
Many of those outside the tragic drama of despoiling tend to blame the victim for what had happened.
Some people, out of callousness, may even say that “the victim had it coming” believing that in uttering that statement, their self-righteousness will right the wrong that had been done.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, for instance, takes on new meaning when this is read in the context of war waged against, say, despots and dictators.
There are key questions that come into play even as we speak of the abuses and atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein and his regime against his own people.
The question of liberating peoples is of paramount import.
Any act that is antithetical to that aim invalidates any legitimate claim to helping people redeem themselves and restore their honor as a result of their being systematically raped by their very own leaders.
A review of the history of the concept and reality of rape gives us a clue.
The Latin word rapere offers on insight on what rape had been—on what rape continues to be.
The dictionary meanings are instructive: to seize, to take away by force. Webster’s does not fail us in accounting what this rapere thing is all about.
To strip.
To rob.
To strip of belongings.
To strip of possessions.
To strip of value.
And then some others: to pillage, to ravage.
To plunder.
To abuse.
To despoil.
To loot.
The correlatives are clear: rapist and raped.
Abuser and abused.
Destroyer and destroyed.
Plunderer and plundered.
Despoiler and despoiled.
Looter and looted.
Pillager and pillaged.
We see the images—and they shock us.
In one account, Austin App has talked about the “mass rape of German women at the end of World War II” in his book Ravishing the Women of Conquered Europe. App documents the accounts of witnesses including the rape of nuns in a convent, many of them eventually ending up pregnant.
In James Yin and Shi Young’s The Rape of Nanking, the Japanese invaders raped 80,000 women and girls in three months from December 1937 to March 1938. Yin and Young talk of the savagery that happened: “thousands were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disemboweled.”
We can only imagine here the human capacity to destroy—and that capacity to destroy humanity itself. We are searching here for that human capacity to create.
If we go by the tropes of rape, we can talk about forms of violence that have been inflicted upon others, upon peoples, upon communities.
In these many forms of violence, rape is not an individual act even it may be perpetrated by an individual. There is a ground here—individual as well as collective—which makes rape happens.
We then can talk about cultural rape.
We then can talk about what other authors call “rape of history” when the civilization and memory of a people are systematically wiped out—defaced and erased are the key concepts here—in order to make them zombies and robots.
The greatest and gravest mistake that could happen to the raped is when the raped begins to like it because the conditioning for the liking becomes effective.
The promise of money is one form of a conditioning when the raped is poor and powerless and financially incapacitated.
Resisting millions of pesos and the seductions of the shining silver becomes difficult. “Nasira ka na, hindi na mababago ‘yan. Tanggapin mo na ang pera. May puhunan ka pa,” some people pretending as the sage would say.
We remember one Filipino diplomat giving his advice to overseas Filipino workers, many of them women: “If you cannot resist it, enjoy it.”
The bad and evil pragmatic way of looking at how rape is to be resolved emboldens more and more the rapist and invests upon him the power to imagine the next victim.
The cycle continues if this happens.
This is where resistance is necessary by unmasking the terrible truths that attend to each rape whether we speak of individuals or gangs raping others or countries plundering other countries because they have a democratic message to tell.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
Asian American without the Hyphen
For some curious linguistic reason, the way immigrants from Asia were represented in the English language was one with a hyphen: Asian-American.
How the hyphen got there could be by reason of the double becoming one: when two independent words are joined to form a single concept or meaning, the words are conjoined by a hyphen.
Since many of the present-day Americans came from certain cultures or ethno-linguistic identities, the hyphen proliferated.
And then today, the hyphen, curiously, is again being dropped for some reason that has something to do with that recognition that the United States is a nation among nations and that the country has to be true to its promise of equality to all peoples.
In the first issue of The Weekly Inquirer, we talked of the vision of the newspaper: “There is a need to give voice to the (im)migrant experience. This newspaper will precisely do that by giving room to that voice and by locating the (im)migrant in the many spaces where he is but has remained invisible these many years.”
That was an offertory as we imagined that the paper is not going to be only about Filipino immigrants in the United States but all other immigrants who would want to take part in finding the voice that has been muffled and stifled for long.
So as The Weekly Inquirer reached its 20th issue, we dropped the word “Philippines” as a matter of a planned strategy in order to reach out to the bigger and larger immigrant community out there.
We will begin to account more and more of the Asian experience in the United States—that Asian experience that is also at the same time American.
We call this the Asian American experience without the hyphen.
We call this the Asian American identity that is at the same, at the very least, plural.
The immigrant is Asian—if he still recognizes that, if he still acknowledges it.
The immigrant is also American—his dream pursued.
Here we see the commingling, in a richly textured way, of fact and dream, of dream becoming fact.
Here we see the genesis of a story that accounts the dropping of the hyphen which is not tenable in the first place, not when the immigrant has just taken his oath and recited his allegiance to his new county.
The hyphen clouds and muddies the representation.
It accounts certain inseparability as if the hyphen has become a necessary connective as if the other cannot be without the other.
Like body-soul or body-and-soul, if one were to believe in this Aristotelian hylemorphic theory.
But there is one fact that we need to surface in the immigrant story.
He carries with him two nations, separate and divisible.
The first is the nation as his past-as-present.
The second is the nation as his present-as-present, the nation as his present-as-future.
We call this bi-nationality, a reality among immigrants.
You leave behind a land and come into another land whose topography and contour you do not know in the beginning.
The old nation could have been terrorizing and awesome.
The new nation could be terrorizing and awesome as well.
For there is both terror and awe in departing.
There is also both terror and awe in arriving.
In leaving the first homeland, you are taken aback by the dark possibilities of starting out anew while at the same time you are moved—and moved so deeply—by the possibilities of the future, by the vast promise of possibilities that the first immigrants believed in and held on to.
In arriving at the new homeland, the same terror sets in at first as soon as the romance has waned. Here you are face-to-face with the possibilities of hunger, want, deprivation, homelessness, penury, abuse by your own people, this last one as real and as certain as the sun rising in the east.
Among Filipinos, the key code is the binary “may papel-walang papel.”
Or another one of the same meaning: “bagong dating-matagal na.”
Those who are first in the queue of those who take advantage of you are your countrymen.
They give you the lowest of wages because you are what you are: “walang papel, wala kang papel.”
They give you the slave treatment because you are what you are: “bagong dating.”
Those who oppress you are the others in the binary: the “may papel” or the “matagal na.”
You end up looking at the pages of newspapers as you look for work.
You end up looking into doing some kind of a research of those employment agencies that give you better options and less headache, those agencies that rob you less of your precious dollars and give more substance to their promise of linking you up with employers who will “petition” you or sign up papers for your sponsorship for the working visa or other forms of visa that could “legalize” your stay in the county.
Many agencies know their trade so well by having fooled so many.
They capitalize on your being “bagong dating/bagong salta.”
They promise you the moon, the starts, even the sun with its early morning glow.
And you believe them.
How they can go wrong, these people who have been here far longer than you can ever count the years, the employment agencies with their sweet tongue and sweet language?
And so you count your money.
They ask you for your extension application money because, well, you have to stay legally.
The employment agency people pad the immigration fee for the application to say, pad it four hundred times in account of their professional service.
You never see the application—and you will realize afterwards that your signature in the application had been forged by the sweet-talking employment agency owner.
You read the reasons in the application for extension.
The English is bad, the grammar horrible.
The application says that you have “much money to spent” and that you “would like to go around the beautiful America with the beautiful spots for history and fantasy.” Whoa!
And so as pretending Asian American, your travails begin.
You say to yourself: Welcome to the land of opportunity.
There you are, the Asian American without the hyphen.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
How the hyphen got there could be by reason of the double becoming one: when two independent words are joined to form a single concept or meaning, the words are conjoined by a hyphen.
Since many of the present-day Americans came from certain cultures or ethno-linguistic identities, the hyphen proliferated.
And then today, the hyphen, curiously, is again being dropped for some reason that has something to do with that recognition that the United States is a nation among nations and that the country has to be true to its promise of equality to all peoples.
In the first issue of The Weekly Inquirer, we talked of the vision of the newspaper: “There is a need to give voice to the (im)migrant experience. This newspaper will precisely do that by giving room to that voice and by locating the (im)migrant in the many spaces where he is but has remained invisible these many years.”
That was an offertory as we imagined that the paper is not going to be only about Filipino immigrants in the United States but all other immigrants who would want to take part in finding the voice that has been muffled and stifled for long.
So as The Weekly Inquirer reached its 20th issue, we dropped the word “Philippines” as a matter of a planned strategy in order to reach out to the bigger and larger immigrant community out there.
We will begin to account more and more of the Asian experience in the United States—that Asian experience that is also at the same time American.
We call this the Asian American experience without the hyphen.
We call this the Asian American identity that is at the same, at the very least, plural.
The immigrant is Asian—if he still recognizes that, if he still acknowledges it.
The immigrant is also American—his dream pursued.
Here we see the commingling, in a richly textured way, of fact and dream, of dream becoming fact.
Here we see the genesis of a story that accounts the dropping of the hyphen which is not tenable in the first place, not when the immigrant has just taken his oath and recited his allegiance to his new county.
The hyphen clouds and muddies the representation.
It accounts certain inseparability as if the hyphen has become a necessary connective as if the other cannot be without the other.
Like body-soul or body-and-soul, if one were to believe in this Aristotelian hylemorphic theory.
But there is one fact that we need to surface in the immigrant story.
He carries with him two nations, separate and divisible.
The first is the nation as his past-as-present.
The second is the nation as his present-as-present, the nation as his present-as-future.
We call this bi-nationality, a reality among immigrants.
You leave behind a land and come into another land whose topography and contour you do not know in the beginning.
The old nation could have been terrorizing and awesome.
The new nation could be terrorizing and awesome as well.
For there is both terror and awe in departing.
There is also both terror and awe in arriving.
In leaving the first homeland, you are taken aback by the dark possibilities of starting out anew while at the same time you are moved—and moved so deeply—by the possibilities of the future, by the vast promise of possibilities that the first immigrants believed in and held on to.
In arriving at the new homeland, the same terror sets in at first as soon as the romance has waned. Here you are face-to-face with the possibilities of hunger, want, deprivation, homelessness, penury, abuse by your own people, this last one as real and as certain as the sun rising in the east.
Among Filipinos, the key code is the binary “may papel-walang papel.”
Or another one of the same meaning: “bagong dating-matagal na.”
Those who are first in the queue of those who take advantage of you are your countrymen.
They give you the lowest of wages because you are what you are: “walang papel, wala kang papel.”
They give you the slave treatment because you are what you are: “bagong dating.”
Those who oppress you are the others in the binary: the “may papel” or the “matagal na.”
You end up looking at the pages of newspapers as you look for work.
You end up looking into doing some kind of a research of those employment agencies that give you better options and less headache, those agencies that rob you less of your precious dollars and give more substance to their promise of linking you up with employers who will “petition” you or sign up papers for your sponsorship for the working visa or other forms of visa that could “legalize” your stay in the county.
Many agencies know their trade so well by having fooled so many.
They capitalize on your being “bagong dating/bagong salta.”
They promise you the moon, the starts, even the sun with its early morning glow.
And you believe them.
How they can go wrong, these people who have been here far longer than you can ever count the years, the employment agencies with their sweet tongue and sweet language?
And so you count your money.
They ask you for your extension application money because, well, you have to stay legally.
The employment agency people pad the immigration fee for the application to say, pad it four hundred times in account of their professional service.
You never see the application—and you will realize afterwards that your signature in the application had been forged by the sweet-talking employment agency owner.
You read the reasons in the application for extension.
The English is bad, the grammar horrible.
The application says that you have “much money to spent” and that you “would like to go around the beautiful America with the beautiful spots for history and fantasy.” Whoa!
And so as pretending Asian American, your travails begin.
You say to yourself: Welcome to the land of opportunity.
There you are, the Asian American without the hyphen.
Pub, INQ, V1N21, Nov 2005
Waking Up With a Heavy Heart From Exile
From exile, you always
wake up with a heavy heart
even when the news hits
you right with its promise
of murder and desire
of hope and language
that invade the throat
and the aroma of Colombian
coffee newly brewed
to perk you up
to make you welcome
the smile of the early hours
the smile of the young sun.
There is much to dream of
much to dream on and on
from here in these parts
as the rains of fall
pour down on you
like a purge cleansing your
soul lost to the foreign evening
you do not recognize
for the strangeness
of their scenes
and scent,
expelling the sorrow
residing in your chest
as you remind yourself
of the good days
coming on ahead
breaking their silences
to you in song
and sweetness.
You go through
the grind of labor,
eight hours or more
that extend to the night
to patch up the blank spaces
of news you put together
for the week
to wake the heavy hearts
of exiles,
those who do not know
any longer where to go
any longer where to run
they do not know
where they come from
what climate brought them here
what seasons brought them
to grieve over distances
bridging the lost time
marking their being away.
You wake up
with a heavy heart
from exile and still
you hear the ugly news
from home,
the tall tales
about not learning
the moral in singing
the morning song.
A.S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nov. 12, 2005
wake up with a heavy heart
even when the news hits
you right with its promise
of murder and desire
of hope and language
that invade the throat
and the aroma of Colombian
coffee newly brewed
to perk you up
to make you welcome
the smile of the early hours
the smile of the young sun.
There is much to dream of
much to dream on and on
from here in these parts
as the rains of fall
pour down on you
like a purge cleansing your
soul lost to the foreign evening
you do not recognize
for the strangeness
of their scenes
and scent,
expelling the sorrow
residing in your chest
as you remind yourself
of the good days
coming on ahead
breaking their silences
to you in song
and sweetness.
You go through
the grind of labor,
eight hours or more
that extend to the night
to patch up the blank spaces
of news you put together
for the week
to wake the heavy hearts
of exiles,
those who do not know
any longer where to go
any longer where to run
they do not know
where they come from
what climate brought them here
what seasons brought them
to grieve over distances
bridging the lost time
marking their being away.
You wake up
with a heavy heart
from exile and still
you hear the ugly news
from home,
the tall tales
about not learning
the moral in singing
the morning song.
A.S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nov. 12, 2005
Sa Lansangan ng ating mga Pangarap
(Kay Miles Barbaza, gurong nandarayuhan sa Gallup, New Mexico)
Isang osipong
palaisipan
ang kapalaran
nating lahat,
tayong
mga nandarayuhan
sa wika
sa diwa
sa isip,
tayong
nagtuturo ngayon
sa mga banyagang
kapanalig
sa pagiging exilo
sa ating nais.
Sabi mo ganyan din
ang mga katutubong
Amerikanong inagawan
ng lupa
ng langit
ng ligalig
ng libog
ng mga dayong
tulad natin
pero di rin
nating katulad.
Hindi tayo
nangmamangmang
kundi nagpapasimuno
sa pagpapagaling
ng sugat sa isip.
Nagtuturo tayo
ng mga taludtod
ng buhay
ng mga bersikulo
ng kaligtasan
sa pagbabalik muli at muli
sa lugar ng kaluluwa
tulad ng kuwento
ng hogan
na bahay
na tahanan din
balay na tunay
ng espiritung
nawawala sapagkat
nawawalay,
sumasalisi ng landas
lumalayo sa atin
sa duguang kalye
na ngayon
ay sa galit
humihiyaw,
nagbibihis muli
ng pula at kawalan.
Lumalayo tayo sa atin,
sa pook ng ating
puson
puso
pusod
at sa lamig ng gabi
at hangin sa parang
sa Gallup o sa Paracale
ng ating mga alalahanin,
iisipin nating ng libong ulit
ang kinabukasan
ng mga pangako
sa mga silid-aralang
pinagtaksilan
natin sumandali
at naglalaho
sa ating
nagkukunwaring
pagpipiging.
Malayo tayong tunay
sa atin at simula ngayon,
magtatapos ang ritwal
ng pagtawag
sa ating mga habilin,
tayong nag-iwan ng wika
ng pagbabalik
mula sa paglalakbay
sa mga lansangan
ng mga pangarap natin.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Nob. 10, 2005
Isang osipong
palaisipan
ang kapalaran
nating lahat,
tayong
mga nandarayuhan
sa wika
sa diwa
sa isip,
tayong
nagtuturo ngayon
sa mga banyagang
kapanalig
sa pagiging exilo
sa ating nais.
Sabi mo ganyan din
ang mga katutubong
Amerikanong inagawan
ng lupa
ng langit
ng ligalig
ng libog
ng mga dayong
tulad natin
pero di rin
nating katulad.
Hindi tayo
nangmamangmang
kundi nagpapasimuno
sa pagpapagaling
ng sugat sa isip.
Nagtuturo tayo
ng mga taludtod
ng buhay
ng mga bersikulo
ng kaligtasan
sa pagbabalik muli at muli
sa lugar ng kaluluwa
tulad ng kuwento
ng hogan
na bahay
na tahanan din
balay na tunay
ng espiritung
nawawala sapagkat
nawawalay,
sumasalisi ng landas
lumalayo sa atin
sa duguang kalye
na ngayon
ay sa galit
humihiyaw,
nagbibihis muli
ng pula at kawalan.
Lumalayo tayo sa atin,
sa pook ng ating
puson
puso
pusod
at sa lamig ng gabi
at hangin sa parang
sa Gallup o sa Paracale
ng ating mga alalahanin,
iisipin nating ng libong ulit
ang kinabukasan
ng mga pangako
sa mga silid-aralang
pinagtaksilan
natin sumandali
at naglalaho
sa ating
nagkukunwaring
pagpipiging.
Malayo tayong tunay
sa atin at simula ngayon,
magtatapos ang ritwal
ng pagtawag
sa ating mga habilin,
tayong nag-iwan ng wika
ng pagbabalik
mula sa paglalakbay
sa mga lansangan
ng mga pangarap natin.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Nob. 10, 2005
Pekpekkel a Pekpekkel
(Ken Nasudi Anchin, gapu
ta diak mapuyotan ti sugatna)
Kuna dagiti anghel
A naitublakka, basang.
Naduggiran ti puso,
Pinadara ti sanaang.
Natadem dagiti riduma
Iti panagaddang,
Panagbirbirok
Iti lawag iti kuridemdem
A panagwalangwalang
Ti ama dagiti saibbek,
Kaawan piman ti mangpuyot
Iti garumiad ti isip
Ti ubing a pinanawan.
Maluyaanak iti eksena:
Ayabam ti amam
Nga awan, immadayo
Tapno agbirok iti nagan
Dagiti maisakmol ken makan.
Anian a burburtia daytoy!
Awan ti mangandingay
Iti pannakaitublak
Iti saan laeng a sagpaminsan.
Awan mangisawang
Iti orasion nga araraw met
Ti pekpekkel a pekpekkel
Dardaras a dumakkel.
Awan ti ama a mangapiras
Iti sugat ti kinaubing,
Daytay lagipto
Ti sakit ti nakem
Gapu iti ranggas
Ti gasat, kisang ti komedor,
Saraaw ti pinggan
A manglanglangan
A gasut no agulser.
Iti nakem, iladawak
Ti inaudi nga anghel,
Arakupek kas mangisalakan,
Sakanto itayyek iti langit
Dagiti pito ken pito
A panaglunit ti saem.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nob. 10, 2005
ta diak mapuyotan ti sugatna)
Kuna dagiti anghel
A naitublakka, basang.
Naduggiran ti puso,
Pinadara ti sanaang.
Natadem dagiti riduma
Iti panagaddang,
Panagbirbirok
Iti lawag iti kuridemdem
A panagwalangwalang
Ti ama dagiti saibbek,
Kaawan piman ti mangpuyot
Iti garumiad ti isip
Ti ubing a pinanawan.
Maluyaanak iti eksena:
Ayabam ti amam
Nga awan, immadayo
Tapno agbirok iti nagan
Dagiti maisakmol ken makan.
Anian a burburtia daytoy!
Awan ti mangandingay
Iti pannakaitublak
Iti saan laeng a sagpaminsan.
Awan mangisawang
Iti orasion nga araraw met
Ti pekpekkel a pekpekkel
Dardaras a dumakkel.
Awan ti ama a mangapiras
Iti sugat ti kinaubing,
Daytay lagipto
Ti sakit ti nakem
Gapu iti ranggas
Ti gasat, kisang ti komedor,
Saraaw ti pinggan
A manglanglangan
A gasut no agulser.
Iti nakem, iladawak
Ti inaudi nga anghel,
Arakupek kas mangisalakan,
Sakanto itayyek iti langit
Dagiti pito ken pito
A panaglunit ti saem.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Carson, CA
Nob. 10, 2005
Our Mortal Dreams, Here They Come
In another city, a countryman dies.
A woman caregiver, the wires tell
In words circuituous and fanciful
You never see the dire days of her
Death. It is fall here as you imagine
The delayed lamentations
Of children and mother and kin,
The same scene haunting you so
In your mortal dreams. It is lifted
From Filipinas, the film and fiction,
A fact for overseas workers, this lady
Dying with her fears. She leaps
To her end, she is raped of her song,
Robbed in daylights coming in low
And late, the way the amo came in
To her with the lust of evenings
Named and unnamed. Another Filipina
Dies, another hope comes alive
Sparkling in the deep dark
Of stolen secrets, useless loves.
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
A woman caregiver, the wires tell
In words circuituous and fanciful
You never see the dire days of her
Death. It is fall here as you imagine
The delayed lamentations
Of children and mother and kin,
The same scene haunting you so
In your mortal dreams. It is lifted
From Filipinas, the film and fiction,
A fact for overseas workers, this lady
Dying with her fears. She leaps
To her end, she is raped of her song,
Robbed in daylights coming in low
And late, the way the amo came in
To her with the lust of evenings
Named and unnamed. Another Filipina
Dies, another hope comes alive
Sparkling in the deep dark
Of stolen secrets, useless loves.
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
Home in Exile, Exile from Home, Part VIII
Another Bacong poem recreates the familiar from the foreign and the usual from the strange by an appeal to a nostalgia for a place personal and life-giving, even if at times paradoxical for its suggestion of a continuing colonial culture and practice like the melodious intoning of a white Christmas.
Tatlong taon ko nang nararanasan
ang magdiwang ng kapaskuhan
sa ibang bayan
nakita’t nahipo ko na ang niyebeng
tila bubog ng mga diyamante
na noo’y sa mga awiting pamasko
ko lamang naririnig.
ngunit hinahanap-hanap ko pa rin
ang maligamgam na patak ng ulan
na naghahatid ng buhay
sa tigang na lupain
ng mahal kong bayan.
(It has been three years
of going through Christmas
of celebrating it in other lands
I have seen and touched snow
like small pieces of diamond
I only have come to know
Through the season’s carols
still I am searching for
the warm drop of rain
that gives life
to the dry earth
of my beloved land.)
The return happens—but not necessarily in setting foot on the native soil once again.
The remembering, the mindful recollection of the details of experience back home, are sufficient to get him by and make him succeed in spending Christmas with his aloneness keeping him company.
A poem by Saturnino de Asis Jr. prays to God, invokes His blessings after thanking Him, in the manner of an anamnesis-epiklesis, and then the plea for the virtue of sharing:
O, Lord most high.
Thank you for those
who helped me attain
this overseas employment
and for the wonderful blessing.
The prayer is a contradiction when set against the backdrop of the Philippines as the “largest migrant nation” in the world, when foreign employment does not necessarily mean the good life but the maiming of a limb or coming back home on a cold coffin at the rate of four Filipinos per day.
For as long as the country and its leaders continue to be apathetic to the plight of the poor, exile will remain enchanting, magical, and redeeming because of the promises it offers. Thus, this kind of literature, written from a variety of languages and positions and perspectives, will be produced to document a poetics of difficulty of making meaning out of the wanderer’s dream of dollars and deliverance. The exile can only pray to extend time and space.
Lilia Quindoza-Santiago’s account of Lorna Laraquel, a migrant worker, is a sad, sensitive tale of an exilic dream that does not end in a salvific exodus but the beginning of a cycle more vicious than the previous one. In the poem that ends in a plaintive, if faint but conclusive tone and temper, the migrant who was about to be executed for killing her abusive employer, speaks:
Wala, kailanma’y walang buhay na maalwan
Kung walang mapagpalang lupang tinubuan .
(No, there will never be a better life
If there is no nurturing and caring nativeland.)
How the space and time in the life of an exile awaiting execution leads to a narrative of a paschal mystery is apocryphal. It does not happen to mortals, this mystery, much more to Filipinos.
At best, the space and time before the final hour form part of a semiosis of want and deprivation and the unabated democratization of misery and poverty by political leaders professing and promising liberation to the masses.
The waiting game is some kind of an ontology of a suffering made more real by a critical reflection of that anomaly in a society professing Christianity and justice and “church of the poor.” Ceres Doyo recounts Laraquel’s experience this way: “She counted the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds. Her thoughts turned to home. She had left her family and friends for this land that had promised her the good things in life. Now she was experiencing this place as it really was—a desert of the soul.” (To be continued)
Pub, INQ, V1N20, Nov 2005
Tatlong taon ko nang nararanasan
ang magdiwang ng kapaskuhan
sa ibang bayan
nakita’t nahipo ko na ang niyebeng
tila bubog ng mga diyamante
na noo’y sa mga awiting pamasko
ko lamang naririnig.
ngunit hinahanap-hanap ko pa rin
ang maligamgam na patak ng ulan
na naghahatid ng buhay
sa tigang na lupain
ng mahal kong bayan.
(It has been three years
of going through Christmas
of celebrating it in other lands
I have seen and touched snow
like small pieces of diamond
I only have come to know
Through the season’s carols
still I am searching for
the warm drop of rain
that gives life
to the dry earth
of my beloved land.)
The return happens—but not necessarily in setting foot on the native soil once again.
The remembering, the mindful recollection of the details of experience back home, are sufficient to get him by and make him succeed in spending Christmas with his aloneness keeping him company.
A poem by Saturnino de Asis Jr. prays to God, invokes His blessings after thanking Him, in the manner of an anamnesis-epiklesis, and then the plea for the virtue of sharing:
O, Lord most high.
Thank you for those
who helped me attain
this overseas employment
and for the wonderful blessing.
The prayer is a contradiction when set against the backdrop of the Philippines as the “largest migrant nation” in the world, when foreign employment does not necessarily mean the good life but the maiming of a limb or coming back home on a cold coffin at the rate of four Filipinos per day.
For as long as the country and its leaders continue to be apathetic to the plight of the poor, exile will remain enchanting, magical, and redeeming because of the promises it offers. Thus, this kind of literature, written from a variety of languages and positions and perspectives, will be produced to document a poetics of difficulty of making meaning out of the wanderer’s dream of dollars and deliverance. The exile can only pray to extend time and space.
Lilia Quindoza-Santiago’s account of Lorna Laraquel, a migrant worker, is a sad, sensitive tale of an exilic dream that does not end in a salvific exodus but the beginning of a cycle more vicious than the previous one. In the poem that ends in a plaintive, if faint but conclusive tone and temper, the migrant who was about to be executed for killing her abusive employer, speaks:
Wala, kailanma’y walang buhay na maalwan
Kung walang mapagpalang lupang tinubuan .
(No, there will never be a better life
If there is no nurturing and caring nativeland.)
How the space and time in the life of an exile awaiting execution leads to a narrative of a paschal mystery is apocryphal. It does not happen to mortals, this mystery, much more to Filipinos.
At best, the space and time before the final hour form part of a semiosis of want and deprivation and the unabated democratization of misery and poverty by political leaders professing and promising liberation to the masses.
The waiting game is some kind of an ontology of a suffering made more real by a critical reflection of that anomaly in a society professing Christianity and justice and “church of the poor.” Ceres Doyo recounts Laraquel’s experience this way: “She counted the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds. Her thoughts turned to home. She had left her family and friends for this land that had promised her the good things in life. Now she was experiencing this place as it really was—a desert of the soul.” (To be continued)
Pub, INQ, V1N20, Nov 2005
REDEMPTION--Chapter Two
“Redemption” tackles the life of five daughters and a mother. Two of the daughters are in the United States; the three are left in the home country trying as much as they could to live life in earnest and in the raw. All the five daughters carry with them the wounds that precede redemption: the wounds of life, the wounds of memory, the wounds of family, the wounds of relationships, the wound of discovering the rugged path to self-discovery and healing.
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
Chapter Two
January 20, 2005
Barangay Sinamar
Linglingay, Isabela
Lagrimas, Adingko,
Things are not easy either down here. I am at the cocoa and coffee fields of mother’s father. Auntie Sita asked me to come by here and go figure out what is in the mortgage with the bank. I understand that the government’s bank—or what used to be the bank of the people but is now in the hands of the capitalists as soon as President Corazon Aquino rose to power from the ashes of her husband’s traitorous assassination by the enemy—is asking our family to pay up grandfather’s loan including the onerous interest. The demand is under the pain of foreclosure. So everyone is so concerned about what would become of the land if it goes into the wrong hands. Grandfather had asked that he be buried in the land and which the older sons did. So there is the memory of the difficult life going to the terror of forgetting. If this land will be foreclosed, there is no way we can recover who we are. Or at least part of who we are.
We all have run away from this land.
All of us.
Only the caretaker is left there, the tenant who has seen to it that after the death of grandfather, the land would be taken care of properly by believing that he will outlive all of us.
I really do not really know much about loans and mortgages, you see. What has life in the religious convent taught me except to keep on with my recitation of the rosary during angelus and go after the kids of the rich during the day?
I have my degree in commerce, the education I got by sweating it out with the sisters who told me that they were working for Christ, that they were workers of Christ. I did all the sweeping and the hard labor and they were working for Christ.
I swept floors and scrubbed clean the latrines of the convent school.
I prayed a lot when Lola Madre took me from Cauayan and brought to this convent down in Urdaneta. She was friends with the sisters, you see. One of the sisters, she told me, was her novice in their convent up the hills in Baguio.
O I cleaned the convent, helped in the kitchen, did the laundry and I prayed and prayed a lot.
I prayed for healing and I prayed that Nanang would have been better as dead meat.
I was her daughter, true.
But I knew in my heart I was not her daughter too.
I was her mistake.
I was her very very costly mistake.
People were talking in that little barrio where I came from, where we all came from.
The nights had ears.
The days had eyes.
The winds had both ears and eyes.
The people had evil thoughts that were right.
And true enough, I began to see the big picture.
That I was to be the reminder of that act that led her to perdition.
Perhaps I had been her first mistake.
I do not know, Ading.
All I know is that I had an elder sister.
Nanang named her Josefa after the birth name of Lola Madre who had to drop it when she took the habit and became a mistress of novices in the bright, airy, and sweet-smelling hills up in Quezon.
Josefa had all bright eyes as a child. There was laughter, joy, and contentment in those eyes that spoke of innocence.
She had curly hair like those of the young corn in Tatang’s field.
She lived a few months after the guardian angel left her.
She lost her name and they had to give her another name. I cannot remember now. Must have been Wayawaya in honor of the memory of our people on a June day when at school we had all those elaborate ritual of flag raising and reciting our oath to love our country and motherland more and more.
I remember in those independence ceremonies that would require us to wear something ethnic, something that came close to a parody of the revolutionaries against the Spaniards and then eventually against the other colonizers.
How I wish I were Mother Philippines.
I would imagine my being the motherland, me in my flowing dress of red, white, and blue silk sewn by the best dressmaker in town.
In my suit of the three colors, I would declaim: “Mother Philippines, teachers, parents, guests, ladies and gentlemen: I come before to say that today marks our independence day, this glorious day of our freedom, this glorious day marking our desire to be free again.”
Even as I imagined that I would be our country, I had Nanang monkeying with my dreams.
Again and again she would run away even on Independence Day that my imagination was wildest and purest.
I was five when she first did it, as far as I know.
But then Tatang said she had run away before right after Manang Josefa died.
Maybe she was looking for her lost child, Tatang said to me one day before he decided to die and end all the shame and embarrassment Nanang brought into his house.
I say Tatang decided to die. I knew in my heart he wanted to die.
For many times he met death and each time he would spring back to life and pick up the pieces again only to end up dying again, dying gradually, painfully, taking in all the pain, the shame, the shame, and more shame.
She would run away with her free spirit with a new man.
She and her man would go the mountains, romp the valleys, hide in forests and hills and in the bottom of seas and rivers.
She and her man would hide in the dark of the night.
She and her man would hide in the light of the young moon.
She and her man would hide in her dreams of vaudeville.
She and her man would hide in the comedia of the town, in the words of the characters she would love to mimic.
She and her man would hide in the meaningless words she would utter.
She and her man would hide in her actions of washing her hands every single second, every single minute, every single hour.
She said her hands were dirty.
She said her hands were bloodied by the death of her dream for the lost child, her childish ghost haunting her, taunting her to give her some of her milk and not be selfish with the juice of her nipples, her body, and her womanhood.
She spoke of Manang Josefa in the present tense even when I was born, Tatang said.
When I was born, Nanang was calling out to Manang Josefa even as I was crying out for attention when the midwife was cutting the umbilical cord and Tatang was ready to put the other part of me on the earthen pot that he would hang in the tree top so I would end up on top of the world and not at the bottom.
I am grateful Tatang did that.
Or the Tatang that I knew he was my Tatang.
Or the Tatang that in death I realized that he was not my father after all.
This is where my sad, sad story begins, Ading.
There is sadness here and this sadness makes me alive. It makes me remember.
It makes me remember all, all the details of this sorrow that has been my lot for a long, long time.
So write this letter to you from the land of the grandfather we never had the chance to live with because he ended up giving up so much of himself to the cause of the revolution.
He lived on this land.
He died on this land.
He died because of this land.
His death was witnessed by the trees he planted, the small brook he protected as if it were his own child, cleaning its sides, cutting the tall grasses on its side, and shooing the reptiles that lived on its verdant banks.
I am here now to remember.
I am here now to reconnect all that which overtook us and make us hostage to the past.
I had to save my soul by getting into the nunnery and there, for years and years on end, I have thought of you all, you who are begotten of the same mother that begot me.
I never knew you any place to run to so I never knew where to go.
Lola Madre, you see, had to save us. As soon as she learned that Nanang went nuts, she took charge of giving us a future.
One day she just came to Bai Regina’s house where I stayed as soon as Father had himself bitten by a rabid dog and in three weeks, he was dead.
Where would I go?
I had no one.
Our brothers had gone away looking for something real after they had their own minds.
It was a hard life, Ading.
A difficult one.
We had to part ways because there was no way we could live under one roof.
When father died, I was eleven. I just had my first of these rituals of womanhood even if I was just a child.
Manong Ben was 15 and he was dreaming of a life of his own. So he went to live with an uncle who was a priest. The priest was running after his secretary and had many kids by the time Manong Ben caught them in the church belfry.
Duardo was 13. What, tell me, what could young people like us do when the only inheritance that was left with you were the bad memories, the terrible days of want and deprivation?
From this town, I will move to the field tomorrow, to the Linglingay of our grandfather’s dreams. The revolution in these parts started in his coffee and cocoa fields. There, he would entertain the revolutionaries of his fantastic tales during that revolution of his youth.
Sometimes I wonder why each generation has to have each own revolution.
I will write to you again when I get to Linglingay. I will tell you about the memories that are alive because they are of the fields.
With all my love now,
Manang Ria
Pub, INQ, V1N20, Nov 2005
“Redemption” is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the time, losing sight of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving the daughters to trek through life’s rough roads without her, without her blessing, without her word that ought to have soothed and salved them. The daughters, after forgiving each other, discover their common pains. They learn to forgive themselves and all the people who wronged them. In the end, they conquer their own private purgatories.
Chapter Two
January 20, 2005
Barangay Sinamar
Linglingay, Isabela
Lagrimas, Adingko,
Things are not easy either down here. I am at the cocoa and coffee fields of mother’s father. Auntie Sita asked me to come by here and go figure out what is in the mortgage with the bank. I understand that the government’s bank—or what used to be the bank of the people but is now in the hands of the capitalists as soon as President Corazon Aquino rose to power from the ashes of her husband’s traitorous assassination by the enemy—is asking our family to pay up grandfather’s loan including the onerous interest. The demand is under the pain of foreclosure. So everyone is so concerned about what would become of the land if it goes into the wrong hands. Grandfather had asked that he be buried in the land and which the older sons did. So there is the memory of the difficult life going to the terror of forgetting. If this land will be foreclosed, there is no way we can recover who we are. Or at least part of who we are.
We all have run away from this land.
All of us.
Only the caretaker is left there, the tenant who has seen to it that after the death of grandfather, the land would be taken care of properly by believing that he will outlive all of us.
I really do not really know much about loans and mortgages, you see. What has life in the religious convent taught me except to keep on with my recitation of the rosary during angelus and go after the kids of the rich during the day?
I have my degree in commerce, the education I got by sweating it out with the sisters who told me that they were working for Christ, that they were workers of Christ. I did all the sweeping and the hard labor and they were working for Christ.
I swept floors and scrubbed clean the latrines of the convent school.
I prayed a lot when Lola Madre took me from Cauayan and brought to this convent down in Urdaneta. She was friends with the sisters, you see. One of the sisters, she told me, was her novice in their convent up the hills in Baguio.
O I cleaned the convent, helped in the kitchen, did the laundry and I prayed and prayed a lot.
I prayed for healing and I prayed that Nanang would have been better as dead meat.
I was her daughter, true.
But I knew in my heart I was not her daughter too.
I was her mistake.
I was her very very costly mistake.
People were talking in that little barrio where I came from, where we all came from.
The nights had ears.
The days had eyes.
The winds had both ears and eyes.
The people had evil thoughts that were right.
And true enough, I began to see the big picture.
That I was to be the reminder of that act that led her to perdition.
Perhaps I had been her first mistake.
I do not know, Ading.
All I know is that I had an elder sister.
Nanang named her Josefa after the birth name of Lola Madre who had to drop it when she took the habit and became a mistress of novices in the bright, airy, and sweet-smelling hills up in Quezon.
Josefa had all bright eyes as a child. There was laughter, joy, and contentment in those eyes that spoke of innocence.
She had curly hair like those of the young corn in Tatang’s field.
She lived a few months after the guardian angel left her.
She lost her name and they had to give her another name. I cannot remember now. Must have been Wayawaya in honor of the memory of our people on a June day when at school we had all those elaborate ritual of flag raising and reciting our oath to love our country and motherland more and more.
I remember in those independence ceremonies that would require us to wear something ethnic, something that came close to a parody of the revolutionaries against the Spaniards and then eventually against the other colonizers.
How I wish I were Mother Philippines.
I would imagine my being the motherland, me in my flowing dress of red, white, and blue silk sewn by the best dressmaker in town.
In my suit of the three colors, I would declaim: “Mother Philippines, teachers, parents, guests, ladies and gentlemen: I come before to say that today marks our independence day, this glorious day of our freedom, this glorious day marking our desire to be free again.”
Even as I imagined that I would be our country, I had Nanang monkeying with my dreams.
Again and again she would run away even on Independence Day that my imagination was wildest and purest.
I was five when she first did it, as far as I know.
But then Tatang said she had run away before right after Manang Josefa died.
Maybe she was looking for her lost child, Tatang said to me one day before he decided to die and end all the shame and embarrassment Nanang brought into his house.
I say Tatang decided to die. I knew in my heart he wanted to die.
For many times he met death and each time he would spring back to life and pick up the pieces again only to end up dying again, dying gradually, painfully, taking in all the pain, the shame, the shame, and more shame.
She would run away with her free spirit with a new man.
She and her man would go the mountains, romp the valleys, hide in forests and hills and in the bottom of seas and rivers.
She and her man would hide in the dark of the night.
She and her man would hide in the light of the young moon.
She and her man would hide in her dreams of vaudeville.
She and her man would hide in the comedia of the town, in the words of the characters she would love to mimic.
She and her man would hide in the meaningless words she would utter.
She and her man would hide in her actions of washing her hands every single second, every single minute, every single hour.
She said her hands were dirty.
She said her hands were bloodied by the death of her dream for the lost child, her childish ghost haunting her, taunting her to give her some of her milk and not be selfish with the juice of her nipples, her body, and her womanhood.
She spoke of Manang Josefa in the present tense even when I was born, Tatang said.
When I was born, Nanang was calling out to Manang Josefa even as I was crying out for attention when the midwife was cutting the umbilical cord and Tatang was ready to put the other part of me on the earthen pot that he would hang in the tree top so I would end up on top of the world and not at the bottom.
I am grateful Tatang did that.
Or the Tatang that I knew he was my Tatang.
Or the Tatang that in death I realized that he was not my father after all.
This is where my sad, sad story begins, Ading.
There is sadness here and this sadness makes me alive. It makes me remember.
It makes me remember all, all the details of this sorrow that has been my lot for a long, long time.
So write this letter to you from the land of the grandfather we never had the chance to live with because he ended up giving up so much of himself to the cause of the revolution.
He lived on this land.
He died on this land.
He died because of this land.
His death was witnessed by the trees he planted, the small brook he protected as if it were his own child, cleaning its sides, cutting the tall grasses on its side, and shooing the reptiles that lived on its verdant banks.
I am here now to remember.
I am here now to reconnect all that which overtook us and make us hostage to the past.
I had to save my soul by getting into the nunnery and there, for years and years on end, I have thought of you all, you who are begotten of the same mother that begot me.
I never knew you any place to run to so I never knew where to go.
Lola Madre, you see, had to save us. As soon as she learned that Nanang went nuts, she took charge of giving us a future.
One day she just came to Bai Regina’s house where I stayed as soon as Father had himself bitten by a rabid dog and in three weeks, he was dead.
Where would I go?
I had no one.
Our brothers had gone away looking for something real after they had their own minds.
It was a hard life, Ading.
A difficult one.
We had to part ways because there was no way we could live under one roof.
When father died, I was eleven. I just had my first of these rituals of womanhood even if I was just a child.
Manong Ben was 15 and he was dreaming of a life of his own. So he went to live with an uncle who was a priest. The priest was running after his secretary and had many kids by the time Manong Ben caught them in the church belfry.
Duardo was 13. What, tell me, what could young people like us do when the only inheritance that was left with you were the bad memories, the terrible days of want and deprivation?
From this town, I will move to the field tomorrow, to the Linglingay of our grandfather’s dreams. The revolution in these parts started in his coffee and cocoa fields. There, he would entertain the revolutionaries of his fantastic tales during that revolution of his youth.
Sometimes I wonder why each generation has to have each own revolution.
I will write to you again when I get to Linglingay. I will tell you about the memories that are alive because they are of the fields.
With all my love now,
Manang Ria
Pub, INQ, V1N20, Nov 2005
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