To Not to Turn Your Back on Your Homeland

To not to turn your back on your homeland is one goal that is difficult to do when finally you have gone on to the swearing of your oath to love and keep on loving your new country.

Many of the kababayans have remained this way: sincere in their honest intention of keeping the heart pulsing for the motherland and all other sexualized references to the homeland.

Amor patria?

We are reminded of Jose Rizal and his 'Ultimo Adios' when he looked at the homeland as a father in keeping with the patriarchal constructions of a homeland in his time.

Then again,this is not the point.

The point is: to not to turn your back on your homeland even if you have become a citizen of a First World country and have lived half of your life here, took on the skin of the First World resident, with that skin radiating wealth and wit courtesy of the better winds that have cuddled you so in your sleep.

Two Pinoy of this caliber come to mind now:
Tito Tugade and Joe Padre.

Tito Tugade I have met only once but have talked with hours and hours on the phone as if we have known each other for a long time.

Well, as if, I have known him for a long time.

As a young kid in Laoag, I read his novel, 'Puraw a Balitok' many time over and I thought: So, this is how Alaska looks like? At that time, I had known from the books what parka and igloo were and I could relate to what he was talking about when he talked about Anchorage and other places with all the skeet and snow drifting wild in the white land.

Joe Padre I have met in the blog and in the email, and only in these cyberspaces you clear for your thoughts as if some one cares other than you.

I remember Heidegger talking about the concept of 'clearing,' that trope of language getting into a structuring power over experience, understanding, and explanation.

So I have with Tito his novel and email and telephone talks and that one visit he made hurriedly to Los Angeles so we could meet up for a few hours.

So I have with Joe his dream of putting up a kind of a blog for Ilokano literary criticism.

....
To be continued, this blog is having some kind of a techie issue again,,,,,,,