Light On Your Way
(For Tyrone Antonio, our dear father, on his passing, December 31, 2011)
It is the early morning hour over here,
in these places you have not seen
but want to come to. Yes, volcanoes
erupt anew, in the chest. They give birth to feelings
and forms of our islands of grief in these
long distances. A lighted lonely candle is for you.
It is Yuletide cinnamon and apple.
it is pine and sweet basil, its faint glow
mixing with our tearing up, our
emotions on a holiday uncertain in these last
moments of the old year. We know this would
come, your passing on like a skilled thief
a drunken trespasser of the coming year,
the dragon with its fire. Last night,
we shopped for the lucky number
we Walmart-ized for the lucky
signs, the yellow color on your
daughter’s wish for you to meet
up when she comes on Valentine’s.
She never said the word we do not say
but last night, we knew but not quite.
Between the promise of your life
and your death, it is seven thousand miles
of liquid water, and our alien tears
now go with the Waipahu waves, and we
send them all to you. We ask
the current’s undertow to bring you
the blessings of our year bidding
goodbye so a new one can come.
We cannot be with you as you
go. We can only be with you
in the intimacy of your father's smile
we remember in family rituals
we come to at your home:
years of Tondo Christmasses,
more years of your cooking
and now all these without you.
Decades of Maria Payo New Years,
and now without your bang!
And the feast of the Santo Niño,
like Papa Vincent, brother of yours, leading
us to where laughter can lead us to.
We will miss these now,
short occasions, brief and full, to keep
us going in life, celebrating
what we can, and burying
dreams we cannot pursue.
And now this, your passing on.
We have eternity in the memories,
many and varied, you leave behind.
You go to where rest is defined
in the timelessness of Time.
Please say aloha to our mother
whose death you saw.
I see you going away from
her grave, and in the noontime
hours, your faint smile
unraveled to me your need
for you to be allowed to go.
At this hour, our hearts throb
in anguished pain, our feelings raw.
The hazy mornings are cold,
the days are wintry, and we wrap ourselves
with whatever we can hold on to keep us warm
including our deathless recollection
of you, alive in your booming voice,
silent in seeing how all your children
have come unto their own
with and without you. In your death
leave behind the blessings we have known
leave behind the grace of life
we have yet to know. But, yes, you go!
Waipahu, HI/
December 31, 2011
Observer Editorial, January 2012
Resolving Anew
This New Year is another chance to get things right.
The year that is behind us now has extended the very logic of our sense of sacrifice and our sense of hope and we are not going to permit this to keep on being dragged into the New Year.
We want something new.
We want something refreshing.
We want something salving.
It was not the easiest of the years of our life even if last year’s was memorable for what pains we can remember, and what lesson we can draw from these pains, lessons that we pray will make us stronger so that we can do things better.
Part of this resolve—the need to recast our framework of looking at life anew—is to revisit the language we use to reword the vision we have for this year and all the years to come.
The poet T. S. Eliott reminds us of this responsibility when he wrote about the need for us to begin again in a new light, in an ever-new light: ‘For last year’s words belong to last year’s language/And next year’s words await another voice./And to make an end is to make a beginning.’
So many things went wrong in 2011.
So many went right as well.
Plus or minus, in the general scheme of things, there is a deficit of realizations as there is a deficit of the good events that should have visited us and given us some sense of the good life.
Truly, we need to demand from life. And this is a new language.
Truly, we need to demand from our society, community, state, and country. And this is a new language.
Truly, we need to demand from others. And this is a new language.
But truly so, we also need to demand from ourselves so that the vision we have to turn things right might come to a realization. And this is a new language too!
For a dream is only good if gives us the energy to go on, if it moves us, if it makes us hope for the best.
So many of us have been left with only one thing at this time: hope for the morrow, hope for the better.
Given this as our only weapon to fight it out and struggle for this dream to come true, we need to hold on to what this hope can offer us, including its power to instruct us of what is just and fair, of what is good and valuable, of what makes sense.
In our resolve, we need to trust again in our abilities, in what we can do, and in what we are willing to do to pursue something grander than our puny dreams and puny selves.
Out there is a world deprived of what we have, things we sometimes dismiss.
Out there is a world that has not experienced our experience of abundance during the holidays.
Out there is another world that reminds us that our world in this country is one of luxury, excess, surplus.
Out there is another world we cannot see because we have been ensconced in a position of convenience and comfort and as a result we can no longer see the inconvenience and discomfort of others.
Out there is another world that does not look like our own—and we refuse to recognize this world: one of misery, one of wretchedness, one in dire need of redemption.
The challenge for the coming year is this: to see once again that this world, in light of the message of hope for us all, can be made a better place for the many who have less in life.
For the many who have been deprived of their basic freedoms.
For the many who have been deprived of the day-to-day expressions of the good life.
For the many who are still dreaming of the blessings of real democracy and true justice.
Happy New Year to all of you!
Observer/Jan 2012
This New Year is another chance to get things right.
The year that is behind us now has extended the very logic of our sense of sacrifice and our sense of hope and we are not going to permit this to keep on being dragged into the New Year.
We want something new.
We want something refreshing.
We want something salving.
It was not the easiest of the years of our life even if last year’s was memorable for what pains we can remember, and what lesson we can draw from these pains, lessons that we pray will make us stronger so that we can do things better.
Part of this resolve—the need to recast our framework of looking at life anew—is to revisit the language we use to reword the vision we have for this year and all the years to come.
The poet T. S. Eliott reminds us of this responsibility when he wrote about the need for us to begin again in a new light, in an ever-new light: ‘For last year’s words belong to last year’s language/And next year’s words await another voice./And to make an end is to make a beginning.’
So many things went wrong in 2011.
So many went right as well.
Plus or minus, in the general scheme of things, there is a deficit of realizations as there is a deficit of the good events that should have visited us and given us some sense of the good life.
Truly, we need to demand from life. And this is a new language.
Truly, we need to demand from our society, community, state, and country. And this is a new language.
Truly, we need to demand from others. And this is a new language.
But truly so, we also need to demand from ourselves so that the vision we have to turn things right might come to a realization. And this is a new language too!
For a dream is only good if gives us the energy to go on, if it moves us, if it makes us hope for the best.
So many of us have been left with only one thing at this time: hope for the morrow, hope for the better.
Given this as our only weapon to fight it out and struggle for this dream to come true, we need to hold on to what this hope can offer us, including its power to instruct us of what is just and fair, of what is good and valuable, of what makes sense.
In our resolve, we need to trust again in our abilities, in what we can do, and in what we are willing to do to pursue something grander than our puny dreams and puny selves.
Out there is a world deprived of what we have, things we sometimes dismiss.
Out there is a world that has not experienced our experience of abundance during the holidays.
Out there is another world that reminds us that our world in this country is one of luxury, excess, surplus.
Out there is another world we cannot see because we have been ensconced in a position of convenience and comfort and as a result we can no longer see the inconvenience and discomfort of others.
Out there is another world that does not look like our own—and we refuse to recognize this world: one of misery, one of wretchedness, one in dire need of redemption.
The challenge for the coming year is this: to see once again that this world, in light of the message of hope for us all, can be made a better place for the many who have less in life.
For the many who have been deprived of their basic freedoms.
For the many who have been deprived of the day-to-day expressions of the good life.
For the many who are still dreaming of the blessings of real democracy and true justice.
Happy New Year to all of you!
Observer/Jan 2012
An Interview with Hon. Julius Torres
Aloha to a Public Servant--
Consul General Julius Torres Comes to Hawaii
By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
I knew it would be tough getting a schedule to interview the new Consul General Julius Deloso Torres.
He had just arrived, and my request was too soon.
Even when then Consul General Leoncio Cardenas was about to retire, I already wrote to Deputy Consul General Paul Cortez to ask for a chance to sit down with the incoming consul general who would be coming from Amman.
He was warming up and trying to get settled, and here I was, egging on, asking for the moon, and asking for the impossible. He had out-of-state appointments, the appointments secretary told me.
But he was gracious, and in between my final examinations at the sate university where I teach, I got an afternoon to sit down with him. I was to probe his mind.
I arrived at the Philippine Consulate General on Pali Highway some ten minutes earlier than the schedule, with an Observer staff photographer in tow.
There was light rain on the streets. Towards the west, two rainbows displayed their spectacular colors as if announcing to all those who would like to watch that in the days ahead so many good things will come for the people of the Philippines.
I went straight to the main door, past the consular offices.
Not far away, two men got out of a car.
I have not met Consul General Torres before and I had no idea how he looked like. One of the men wore a green long-sleeved barong, the verdant color of life. I knew right there and then that he is the new consul general.
“Are you coming for the interview?” he asks.
“Yes, sir,” I respond. “I have a schedule with the new consul general. At two.”
“You came on time,” he says. “We just had lunch.” He offers his hand.
“Thank you for giving in to my request,” I say and I shake hands with him.
He lets us in into a huge receiving room by the first floor of the consulate general. A portrait of President Benigno Aquino III hangs on a wall that leads to another inner room that I have become familiar with because of a previous media briefing I had to attend prior to the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in November.
From a stint at the Philippine Embassy in Jordan as the ambassador for about three years, Consul General Julius Torres comes to us with a fresh vision of what it is to serve the people of the Philippines everywhere.
His more than thirty years of career service with the Department of Foreign Affairs plus a hands-on experience as press officer of the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo have prepared him to go where his service is needed.
He has been all over, with postings in a number of embassies: Bucharest, Saipan, Brussels, Canberra, Koror, and Toronto. His degree in journalism and his training in civil law, both at the University of the Philippines, came in handy in his various posting, able to merge both the requisites of diplomacy and the need to take good care of Filipino citizens in these places of assignment.
He did not plan to become a career diplomat.
Fate had it that he would become one when, at the height of his activism during the now famous First Quarter Storm, a time when the basic rights of people existed as a fiction during the dark days of Martial Law, he resolved not to give in to the temptations of becoming a factotum of big business, the economic structure that has closed all avenues to giving a fair chance to the people of the Philippines.
He understood the meaning of capital, and the need to put in place the economic infrastructure of the Philippines state.
But he did not approve the unjust ways of exploitation and dehumanization, concrete realities he himself had seen as a young student of Philippine Science High School where he received his initiation into the just cause of fighting for the basic rights of the people.
Instead, he vowed to serve the people by going into public service.
There are a number of things that are clear to him—and one of these is that his service to the people of the Philippines would never be negotiable.
It is a commitment wrought in stone.
It is a commitment wrought upon realizing full well that the need to create a just and fair society for the people of the Philippines remains an ideal worth pursuing.
This was to be his motive for going into public service, for joining the diplomatic corps.
He came from a town in Zambales that spoke Zambal and Ilokano.
But it is Zambal that stuck to him, with some ability to converse in Ilokano when forced, but not confident enough to carry a good conversation. It is in Zambal that he is most at home with, the language of his family, the language of his place, the language of his people.
He knows of the importance to picking up the Ilokano language to serve the majority of the Philippine population in this state.
He says he is looking for someone who could teach him the rudiments of good, and effective, Ilokano. He says he is ready to learn.
From PSHS, he moved to the University of the Philippines at Diliman, and there registered for the sciences, in chemistry, for his bachelor’s.
But activism had its own energy in those days of disquiet in the late 70s, when life was snuffed out from the minds of the young people looking for a chance to contribute their talents and gifts for the homeland.
The dark night of misrule raged on, and its own rage got into his young heart.
He began to speak the language of social change, of democracy that had substance, of liberty that spoke of the good life for everyone.
Awakened to the realities of an indecent regime with its indecent, abusive ways, he resolved to take part in the struggle, for which reason forced him to drop out of school for a time and take part in activism in a more meaningful way. It would take him several years before going back to college, and finish his degree in journalism, instead of chemistry.
Journalism and its emancipatory promises led him to the doorstep of then Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo.
There, he would be trained in the rudiments of writing, public relations, and public administration.
It would also open his eyes to the possibilities of a government service.
He took the Foreign Service examinations while in law school, and he passed. That was to be the beginning of his work in international relations and the end of his dream of becoming a lawyer.
We exchanged notes on our experiences.
There were serendipitous circumstances that led to the crossing of our paths.
While a faculty at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, I had my office fronting the avenue that was used to film Ruben Torres’ life.
The film, Kadre, would star Cesar Montano, and I watched the shooting from my window, curious as to how they used fire trucks to simulate rain dripping from the dense branches of rain trees that formed a canopy along the oval that stretched from the famous naked man in oblation by the administration building and back to University Avenue.
Julius D. Torres the consul general is the younger brother of Ka Ruben, the famous kadre.
The older brother is known for his earlier activism, and for the political leadership that he played during the early days of the Aquino Regime, right after President Marcos’ ouster from power.
I did not know the connection before that—and the serendipity began.
We talked of the FQS, when I was still in the province as a mute witness to the political activism of those priests and college students of the better colleges of my small city in the North.
The governor, Elizabeth Marcos, would paint the walls enclosing the capitol in pristine white. When the police people were not looking, the activists would turn the while walls into a canvass of rage and denunciation, the big words, in red paint, I would memorize.
“You were involved?” I ask.
“Only the deaf and mute would not be involved.”
“Were you afraid?”
“We were. But there was no other choice.”
“Do you regret?”
“No. My only regret is that I had to go back to UP to finish my degree. Nine years before getting my degree.”
“Is this activism the same energy we expect in Hawaii?”
“It is. And more. My stint in Jordan taught me valuable lessons. I had to fight for our people. I had to fight the people who were not in the know. Our people’s right to live the good life is non-negotiable to me. You cannot just simply say that we have to stop deploying our people. We do not have many options in the Philippines. And even if we officially say that, our people would figure out a way to go to Jordan illegally. In that way, they are at the losing end. In that way, there was no means to protect them. The best option is to negotiate with Jordan. And I did.”
“What is your view of our foreign affairs?”
“We ought to have a lean and mean bureaucracy. And an efficient one. We want trained professionals who know the merits of multi-tasking.”
“If you were offered the job of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, would you accept?”
“I would do anything to serve our people.”
We talked more about our people, the prospects for a better homeland, the blighted lives of our wretched poor.
And we talked about the Ilokanos in Hawaii, their enduring spirit, and their capacity to survive.
Observer/Jan 2012
Consul General Julius Torres Comes to Hawaii
By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
I knew it would be tough getting a schedule to interview the new Consul General Julius Deloso Torres.
He had just arrived, and my request was too soon.
Even when then Consul General Leoncio Cardenas was about to retire, I already wrote to Deputy Consul General Paul Cortez to ask for a chance to sit down with the incoming consul general who would be coming from Amman.
He was warming up and trying to get settled, and here I was, egging on, asking for the moon, and asking for the impossible. He had out-of-state appointments, the appointments secretary told me.
But he was gracious, and in between my final examinations at the sate university where I teach, I got an afternoon to sit down with him. I was to probe his mind.
I arrived at the Philippine Consulate General on Pali Highway some ten minutes earlier than the schedule, with an Observer staff photographer in tow.
There was light rain on the streets. Towards the west, two rainbows displayed their spectacular colors as if announcing to all those who would like to watch that in the days ahead so many good things will come for the people of the Philippines.
I went straight to the main door, past the consular offices.
Not far away, two men got out of a car.
I have not met Consul General Torres before and I had no idea how he looked like. One of the men wore a green long-sleeved barong, the verdant color of life. I knew right there and then that he is the new consul general.
“Are you coming for the interview?” he asks.
“Yes, sir,” I respond. “I have a schedule with the new consul general. At two.”
“You came on time,” he says. “We just had lunch.” He offers his hand.
“Thank you for giving in to my request,” I say and I shake hands with him.
He lets us in into a huge receiving room by the first floor of the consulate general. A portrait of President Benigno Aquino III hangs on a wall that leads to another inner room that I have become familiar with because of a previous media briefing I had to attend prior to the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in November.
From a stint at the Philippine Embassy in Jordan as the ambassador for about three years, Consul General Julius Torres comes to us with a fresh vision of what it is to serve the people of the Philippines everywhere.
His more than thirty years of career service with the Department of Foreign Affairs plus a hands-on experience as press officer of the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo have prepared him to go where his service is needed.
He has been all over, with postings in a number of embassies: Bucharest, Saipan, Brussels, Canberra, Koror, and Toronto. His degree in journalism and his training in civil law, both at the University of the Philippines, came in handy in his various posting, able to merge both the requisites of diplomacy and the need to take good care of Filipino citizens in these places of assignment.
He did not plan to become a career diplomat.
Fate had it that he would become one when, at the height of his activism during the now famous First Quarter Storm, a time when the basic rights of people existed as a fiction during the dark days of Martial Law, he resolved not to give in to the temptations of becoming a factotum of big business, the economic structure that has closed all avenues to giving a fair chance to the people of the Philippines.
He understood the meaning of capital, and the need to put in place the economic infrastructure of the Philippines state.
But he did not approve the unjust ways of exploitation and dehumanization, concrete realities he himself had seen as a young student of Philippine Science High School where he received his initiation into the just cause of fighting for the basic rights of the people.
Instead, he vowed to serve the people by going into public service.
There are a number of things that are clear to him—and one of these is that his service to the people of the Philippines would never be negotiable.
It is a commitment wrought in stone.
It is a commitment wrought upon realizing full well that the need to create a just and fair society for the people of the Philippines remains an ideal worth pursuing.
This was to be his motive for going into public service, for joining the diplomatic corps.
He came from a town in Zambales that spoke Zambal and Ilokano.
But it is Zambal that stuck to him, with some ability to converse in Ilokano when forced, but not confident enough to carry a good conversation. It is in Zambal that he is most at home with, the language of his family, the language of his place, the language of his people.
He knows of the importance to picking up the Ilokano language to serve the majority of the Philippine population in this state.
He says he is looking for someone who could teach him the rudiments of good, and effective, Ilokano. He says he is ready to learn.
From PSHS, he moved to the University of the Philippines at Diliman, and there registered for the sciences, in chemistry, for his bachelor’s.
But activism had its own energy in those days of disquiet in the late 70s, when life was snuffed out from the minds of the young people looking for a chance to contribute their talents and gifts for the homeland.
The dark night of misrule raged on, and its own rage got into his young heart.
He began to speak the language of social change, of democracy that had substance, of liberty that spoke of the good life for everyone.
Awakened to the realities of an indecent regime with its indecent, abusive ways, he resolved to take part in the struggle, for which reason forced him to drop out of school for a time and take part in activism in a more meaningful way. It would take him several years before going back to college, and finish his degree in journalism, instead of chemistry.
Journalism and its emancipatory promises led him to the doorstep of then Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo.
There, he would be trained in the rudiments of writing, public relations, and public administration.
It would also open his eyes to the possibilities of a government service.
He took the Foreign Service examinations while in law school, and he passed. That was to be the beginning of his work in international relations and the end of his dream of becoming a lawyer.
We exchanged notes on our experiences.
There were serendipitous circumstances that led to the crossing of our paths.
While a faculty at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, I had my office fronting the avenue that was used to film Ruben Torres’ life.
The film, Kadre, would star Cesar Montano, and I watched the shooting from my window, curious as to how they used fire trucks to simulate rain dripping from the dense branches of rain trees that formed a canopy along the oval that stretched from the famous naked man in oblation by the administration building and back to University Avenue.
Julius D. Torres the consul general is the younger brother of Ka Ruben, the famous kadre.
The older brother is known for his earlier activism, and for the political leadership that he played during the early days of the Aquino Regime, right after President Marcos’ ouster from power.
I did not know the connection before that—and the serendipity began.
We talked of the FQS, when I was still in the province as a mute witness to the political activism of those priests and college students of the better colleges of my small city in the North.
The governor, Elizabeth Marcos, would paint the walls enclosing the capitol in pristine white. When the police people were not looking, the activists would turn the while walls into a canvass of rage and denunciation, the big words, in red paint, I would memorize.
“You were involved?” I ask.
“Only the deaf and mute would not be involved.”
“Were you afraid?”
“We were. But there was no other choice.”
“Do you regret?”
“No. My only regret is that I had to go back to UP to finish my degree. Nine years before getting my degree.”
“Is this activism the same energy we expect in Hawaii?”
“It is. And more. My stint in Jordan taught me valuable lessons. I had to fight for our people. I had to fight the people who were not in the know. Our people’s right to live the good life is non-negotiable to me. You cannot just simply say that we have to stop deploying our people. We do not have many options in the Philippines. And even if we officially say that, our people would figure out a way to go to Jordan illegally. In that way, they are at the losing end. In that way, there was no means to protect them. The best option is to negotiate with Jordan. And I did.”
“What is your view of our foreign affairs?”
“We ought to have a lean and mean bureaucracy. And an efficient one. We want trained professionals who know the merits of multi-tasking.”
“If you were offered the job of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, would you accept?”
“I would do anything to serve our people.”
We talked more about our people, the prospects for a better homeland, the blighted lives of our wretched poor.
And we talked about the Ilokanos in Hawaii, their enduring spirit, and their capacity to survive.
Observer/Jan 2012
Remembering Rizal, Forgetting Gloria
SEVEN TIMES SEVEN YEARS OF SOLITUDE: RIZAL,
HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE
Dear Ayi, a firstborn:
Yesterday, you emailed me about what is happening back there in the home country.
You know well that even from afar, I keep tab of what is dished out by spin doctors who are in the business of tampering with history—or if you so wish, this business of writing history from their perspective, from their dominant position as power-holders who, for centuries and centuries on end, have not let up with their project and program of rationalized greed, wanton accumulation, and systematic prevarication to perpetuate, in an unceasing way, their stranglehold on us.
You are right, son, you are absolutely right.
These people, though born of the land, have not learned from the lessons of the past.
You were citing Jose Rizal in your letter, your phraseology renewing the same wisdom he shared with us in order for us to learn and see and know and understand.
You said: the book of the past is a book of knowledge since it is the repository of all the things that give us a handle, a direction, a sense of self, an idea of what is to come.
You said too: we need to take to heart this book of the past in much the same way we need air to breathe, air to live.
I do not know what to say even if I am your father and in linear time, in a reckoning that cuts up history into empty moments, time, and events, I am the past and you are the present and the future.
I can only laugh now and from my perch here abroad where the wind is cold and the mornings are foggy and the future of other lands and peoples are also divined and dictated in the war rooms of generals and presidents who have appointed themselves as guardians of democracy and Christianity, I see the distance between us: a distance in time, a distance in mind-set, a distance in the manner of loving our very land, our very heartland.
You say you want to take part in the remaking of history when I warned you of your going to the anti-war rallies, you and the rest of the young in the state university crying out loud that warning to the president and her cohorts and allies and jesters about their not knowing history and not learning from the past.
You were quoting Santayana, son—well, not exactly citing him but you and your battalion of idealists were restate his case: Those who do not learn from history will be condemned to repeat it.
You all were a mile away from the pretenders of intellect of the inangbayan, they who can only know how to corrupt Rizal and Santayana and the wise philosophers of old who talked of justice and love and peace and equality as not separate dreams but concrete realities that are part of a continuum.
Perhaps they did not read Diokno or they never understand how he articulated that intertwining of history and collective dream and the task of nation building.
Land and liberty, he said, are extensions of each other.
So do justice and jobs.
So do food and freedom.
What a way of reading history—of opening up its can of worms in order to name our pains, christen our sorrows, diagnose our seven times seven years of solitude.
Ah, that biblical number comes to me like a ghost lurking at the back of my head even as I try to distance myself from this little talk we have—a father and son talk, if you so wish to call it that way.
But I would like to believe that the reverse is truer: That you set this whole discourse into motion, you who are so young and yet pestering me with our business towards the future.
Is it the case that you have read so much about the need to reread our history by reclaiming our stories and allow the real actors to come forward and narrate of their actions and courage and boldness and daring?
May the good Lord of life and history, you who are so young and yet who are conscious of our destiny be blessed more and more.
The Lord of liberty and freedom and justice is the Lord of history, son.
The incarnation story, minus all the gender and sexuality references, tells us so much about history power and truth in our quest for meaning and substance and redemption.
These people whom today play on our fate and our future are the very people who have come on our shores and took part in our feasting uninvited.
I heard you translating this long duration of oppression of our people into a mystical metaphor that harks back to two covenants of Israel, the old one that was so obsessed with the law of law and the second one that pillared on the law of love.
This oppression has been going on for a long time in human history and history itself has sided, it seems, those who have the cunning and gumption to rule over other unjustly.
You called this phenomenon as “the seven time seven years of solitude of our people” a la Gabriel Marquez in his artistic treatise of the solitude of the Latin American peoples and their centuries of oppression under Spain and Portugal and their allies, the priests and other religious leaders most specially.
Perhaps you were thinking of Rizal’s conclusion that when a country does not have the boldness and daring to open the books of its past, that country will never have stake of the future?
You said you are worried about the future and in your youth, at eighteen and in your prime, I should tell you that you have no cause for worry.
But to be honest: I have so much cause for worry even as you also tell me that perhaps there is a fair, fighting chance with that actor who never died in any of his films but always ended up vanquishing the cruel overlord and then, of course, hailed by the people as their hero and redeemer and savior.
But then again you said that this actor might not stand a chance at all since a broadcaster with the baritone to hide his ambition and to convince every foolish voter that he is indeed sincere and ever willing to be crucified on the cross in the name of the last Juan de la Cruz is offering himself up for immolation in the fire of the nation’s politics.
And then of course, the reigning queen in our politics-as-usual collective life wants us to believe her, she with her rice stalks for a bouquet in that multicolored poster splashed on all the city walls and house doors and concrete posts, she with her big American roses smiling sheepishly as if saying: Give me a chance, give me chance.
We must now reckon, however, in the way we must reckon everything in history: that we gave her the presidency on a silver platter in the hope that she would do better than the Erap of the masses, the Erap whose life was a product of programmatic publicity stunt.
Los Angeles/Dec 2004
HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE
Dear Ayi, a firstborn:
Yesterday, you emailed me about what is happening back there in the home country.
You know well that even from afar, I keep tab of what is dished out by spin doctors who are in the business of tampering with history—or if you so wish, this business of writing history from their perspective, from their dominant position as power-holders who, for centuries and centuries on end, have not let up with their project and program of rationalized greed, wanton accumulation, and systematic prevarication to perpetuate, in an unceasing way, their stranglehold on us.
You are right, son, you are absolutely right.
These people, though born of the land, have not learned from the lessons of the past.
You were citing Jose Rizal in your letter, your phraseology renewing the same wisdom he shared with us in order for us to learn and see and know and understand.
You said: the book of the past is a book of knowledge since it is the repository of all the things that give us a handle, a direction, a sense of self, an idea of what is to come.
You said too: we need to take to heart this book of the past in much the same way we need air to breathe, air to live.
I do not know what to say even if I am your father and in linear time, in a reckoning that cuts up history into empty moments, time, and events, I am the past and you are the present and the future.
I can only laugh now and from my perch here abroad where the wind is cold and the mornings are foggy and the future of other lands and peoples are also divined and dictated in the war rooms of generals and presidents who have appointed themselves as guardians of democracy and Christianity, I see the distance between us: a distance in time, a distance in mind-set, a distance in the manner of loving our very land, our very heartland.
You say you want to take part in the remaking of history when I warned you of your going to the anti-war rallies, you and the rest of the young in the state university crying out loud that warning to the president and her cohorts and allies and jesters about their not knowing history and not learning from the past.
You were quoting Santayana, son—well, not exactly citing him but you and your battalion of idealists were restate his case: Those who do not learn from history will be condemned to repeat it.
You all were a mile away from the pretenders of intellect of the inangbayan, they who can only know how to corrupt Rizal and Santayana and the wise philosophers of old who talked of justice and love and peace and equality as not separate dreams but concrete realities that are part of a continuum.
Perhaps they did not read Diokno or they never understand how he articulated that intertwining of history and collective dream and the task of nation building.
Land and liberty, he said, are extensions of each other.
So do justice and jobs.
So do food and freedom.
What a way of reading history—of opening up its can of worms in order to name our pains, christen our sorrows, diagnose our seven times seven years of solitude.
Ah, that biblical number comes to me like a ghost lurking at the back of my head even as I try to distance myself from this little talk we have—a father and son talk, if you so wish to call it that way.
But I would like to believe that the reverse is truer: That you set this whole discourse into motion, you who are so young and yet pestering me with our business towards the future.
Is it the case that you have read so much about the need to reread our history by reclaiming our stories and allow the real actors to come forward and narrate of their actions and courage and boldness and daring?
May the good Lord of life and history, you who are so young and yet who are conscious of our destiny be blessed more and more.
The Lord of liberty and freedom and justice is the Lord of history, son.
The incarnation story, minus all the gender and sexuality references, tells us so much about history power and truth in our quest for meaning and substance and redemption.
These people whom today play on our fate and our future are the very people who have come on our shores and took part in our feasting uninvited.
I heard you translating this long duration of oppression of our people into a mystical metaphor that harks back to two covenants of Israel, the old one that was so obsessed with the law of law and the second one that pillared on the law of love.
This oppression has been going on for a long time in human history and history itself has sided, it seems, those who have the cunning and gumption to rule over other unjustly.
You called this phenomenon as “the seven time seven years of solitude of our people” a la Gabriel Marquez in his artistic treatise of the solitude of the Latin American peoples and their centuries of oppression under Spain and Portugal and their allies, the priests and other religious leaders most specially.
Perhaps you were thinking of Rizal’s conclusion that when a country does not have the boldness and daring to open the books of its past, that country will never have stake of the future?
You said you are worried about the future and in your youth, at eighteen and in your prime, I should tell you that you have no cause for worry.
But to be honest: I have so much cause for worry even as you also tell me that perhaps there is a fair, fighting chance with that actor who never died in any of his films but always ended up vanquishing the cruel overlord and then, of course, hailed by the people as their hero and redeemer and savior.
But then again you said that this actor might not stand a chance at all since a broadcaster with the baritone to hide his ambition and to convince every foolish voter that he is indeed sincere and ever willing to be crucified on the cross in the name of the last Juan de la Cruz is offering himself up for immolation in the fire of the nation’s politics.
And then of course, the reigning queen in our politics-as-usual collective life wants us to believe her, she with her rice stalks for a bouquet in that multicolored poster splashed on all the city walls and house doors and concrete posts, she with her big American roses smiling sheepishly as if saying: Give me a chance, give me chance.
We must now reckon, however, in the way we must reckon everything in history: that we gave her the presidency on a silver platter in the hope that she would do better than the Erap of the masses, the Erap whose life was a product of programmatic publicity stunt.
Los Angeles/Dec 2004
Wayaway, Maysa nga Araraw
Sika ti pul-oy manipud iti taaw,
Wayaway, angin-daya, mangiparparabur
Elemento a mamagtignay kaniak. Ita ket
Ti panagbettak ti bannawag
Ket daytoy a tagainep tinagikukuanak
Idinto ta addaka nga agwaywayas,
Aprosam ti kalachuchi,
Bulong nga adda iti tawak iti daytoy
A kutimermer iti panawen ti lam-ek.
Kadagiti kabambantayan ti Makakilo,
Idiaykan ita, agkumkumpas iti aweng
Dagiti kumaripas a biag, adda kadagiti lugan
Tapno mangibienes iti oras
Kadagiti dadakkel a tattao iti Waikiki. Daytoy
A ritual ket tapno makaidasar
Iti makan iti lamisaan, ket daytoy ket madagdagullit
Kas iti panangpanawpanawmo kaniak.
Kumutukot ti lammin kadagiti tultulang
Ti baniaga a kas kaniak,
Gapu ti iyaalusiisko a mangiyebkas
Iti daytoy a kararag iti maminsan pay
Iti sulinek nga altar ti aldawko:
Dinak tallikudan angin, anges
Ere, pul-oy. Agtalinaedka iti nabaybayag
Ket iyarasaasmo kaniak ti anag
Ti maysa a bigat iti Honolulu
Ken ti wagas iti seremonia
Ti panangselebrar iti sao
A maisurat iti daytoy a pagina, a daytoy
Ket maipapan kadagiti pakarigatanmi.
Ita nga aldaw, isayangkatmi manen
Ti maysa a pannakigasanggasat
Tapno matimudmi ti bukodmi a timek.
Baliksenmi iti nangatngato a timbre,
Nalawlawag itan. Masapul a mangngeganmi
Ti isawangmi. Kas iti panagbettak ti agsapa,
Makitami a sumangbay
Ket iti di agbayag ket ti agmatuon
Nga agbalin nga adu a sagrado nga oras
Kadagiti biagmi nga agbalbaligawgaw.
Wayaway, pul-oy-daya, agbalinka koma
Nga Amian, ti pul-oy-amianan, ket punuem
Dagiti pusomi. Ayabam met ti Abagat, ibagam
Nga agindeg kadagiti nabartek a rabiimi,
Ikkannakami iti pannakausaw,
Sipupuot kadagiti duayya ti Pangagdan,
Tapno sadiay, iti ilelennek ti init,
Umay kadakami ti pannakapnek
Iti darepdep ti ballailo a gapu
Ti panagbayanggudaw ditoy.
Translated from the English original/
Honolulu, HI/ Dec 26, 2011
Wayaway, angin-daya, mangiparparabur
Elemento a mamagtignay kaniak. Ita ket
Ti panagbettak ti bannawag
Ket daytoy a tagainep tinagikukuanak
Idinto ta addaka nga agwaywayas,
Aprosam ti kalachuchi,
Bulong nga adda iti tawak iti daytoy
A kutimermer iti panawen ti lam-ek.
Kadagiti kabambantayan ti Makakilo,
Idiaykan ita, agkumkumpas iti aweng
Dagiti kumaripas a biag, adda kadagiti lugan
Tapno mangibienes iti oras
Kadagiti dadakkel a tattao iti Waikiki. Daytoy
A ritual ket tapno makaidasar
Iti makan iti lamisaan, ket daytoy ket madagdagullit
Kas iti panangpanawpanawmo kaniak.
Kumutukot ti lammin kadagiti tultulang
Ti baniaga a kas kaniak,
Gapu ti iyaalusiisko a mangiyebkas
Iti daytoy a kararag iti maminsan pay
Iti sulinek nga altar ti aldawko:
Dinak tallikudan angin, anges
Ere, pul-oy. Agtalinaedka iti nabaybayag
Ket iyarasaasmo kaniak ti anag
Ti maysa a bigat iti Honolulu
Ken ti wagas iti seremonia
Ti panangselebrar iti sao
A maisurat iti daytoy a pagina, a daytoy
Ket maipapan kadagiti pakarigatanmi.
Ita nga aldaw, isayangkatmi manen
Ti maysa a pannakigasanggasat
Tapno matimudmi ti bukodmi a timek.
Baliksenmi iti nangatngato a timbre,
Nalawlawag itan. Masapul a mangngeganmi
Ti isawangmi. Kas iti panagbettak ti agsapa,
Makitami a sumangbay
Ket iti di agbayag ket ti agmatuon
Nga agbalin nga adu a sagrado nga oras
Kadagiti biagmi nga agbalbaligawgaw.
Wayaway, pul-oy-daya, agbalinka koma
Nga Amian, ti pul-oy-amianan, ket punuem
Dagiti pusomi. Ayabam met ti Abagat, ibagam
Nga agindeg kadagiti nabartek a rabiimi,
Ikkannakami iti pannakausaw,
Sipupuot kadagiti duayya ti Pangagdan,
Tapno sadiay, iti ilelennek ti init,
Umay kadakami ti pannakapnek
Iti darepdep ti ballailo a gapu
Ti panagbayanggudaw ditoy.
Translated from the English original/
Honolulu, HI/ Dec 26, 2011
Budubudo iti Dakulap
Ita a Paskua ket daytoy ti pasamak:
Ti panagbudubudo ti dakulap.
Kas iti aginaldaw a Paskua dagiti pulitiko
Pulis, dagiti agpulpulpog iti aso
Ken bantay. Isu nga ita ket daytoy:
Ti layus a kasta unay a mangigibus
Iti anges ti amin a nabiag.
Saan nga umuna daytoy a pasamak
Iti Cagayan de Oro, ken saanto a
Maudi a rason ti dung-aw.
Versikulo a madagdagullit daytoy
Ta kanayon a nakaungap
Dagiti agbudubudo a dakulap
Dagiti agtagtagainep a pulitiko,
Agar-arapaap kadagiti barato
Pasuksok, pakimkim, aminen
A pangnochebuena, rabii man
Wenno aldaw, panaglamut a din
Sa ketdi agleppas iti sinam-it
No di ket iti adu pay nga am-amangaw.
Litania ketdi dagiti sainnek
Ngem saan a pulos ti babawi
Ta kasano nga agnakem dagiti anak-ti-diakes
No iti didigra ti danum ket addada
Kadagiti kastilio a fuerte
A kinabite dagiti adu a panagbudubudo
Ti dakulap iti bannawag ken agpatnag.
Hon, HI/ Dec 26, 2011
Ti panagbudubudo ti dakulap.
Kas iti aginaldaw a Paskua dagiti pulitiko
Pulis, dagiti agpulpulpog iti aso
Ken bantay. Isu nga ita ket daytoy:
Ti layus a kasta unay a mangigibus
Iti anges ti amin a nabiag.
Saan nga umuna daytoy a pasamak
Iti Cagayan de Oro, ken saanto a
Maudi a rason ti dung-aw.
Versikulo a madagdagullit daytoy
Ta kanayon a nakaungap
Dagiti agbudubudo a dakulap
Dagiti agtagtagainep a pulitiko,
Agar-arapaap kadagiti barato
Pasuksok, pakimkim, aminen
A pangnochebuena, rabii man
Wenno aldaw, panaglamut a din
Sa ketdi agleppas iti sinam-it
No di ket iti adu pay nga am-amangaw.
Litania ketdi dagiti sainnek
Ngem saan a pulos ti babawi
Ta kasano nga agnakem dagiti anak-ti-diakes
No iti didigra ti danum ket addada
Kadagiti kastilio a fuerte
A kinabite dagiti adu a panagbudubudo
Ti dakulap iti bannawag ken agpatnag.
Hon, HI/ Dec 26, 2011
FAO FEATURE. December 2011
REVISITING CHRISTMAS: THE WAY IT WAS, THAT WAY IT IS, AND THE WAY IT OUGHT TO BE
For the almost twenty-five percent of the population of Hawaii who descended from the various ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines, Christmas in the land of exile is not the same as Christmas in the homeland.
The comparison is real, the nostalgia palpable.
For the many who have had a taste of what Christmas was in the home country, the contradictions of the celebration itself dwarf the message it brings to us: the coming into world of a God-made-man.
The master narrative—the grand story of epic proportion that has informed this practice introduced by the Spanish colonizers largely from the medieval interpretation of the Catholic faith—shaped and formed the Philippine understanding of what Christmas is all about.
It is a story of human salvation—all the salvation announced to mankind by an angel.
In the Philippines, as this story took root across centuries, the folk traditions had their way of interpreting what this was.
This paved the way to the summoning of the indigenous dramatic traditions that eventually paved the way to the ‘panagpadanon,’ or ‘panagpatuloy’ or sometimes known in the Tagalog regions as the ‘panunuloyan.’
Here, in this folkloric rendering into a dramatic genre of the story of the first family looking for a place to stay for the night, we have a pregnant Mary in her full term and Joseph, the saintly man who stood by his wife in thick or thin, that wife who bore a child ‘without knowing any man.’
Versions of this are everywhere in the Philippines, as is the renditions of this in stylize form in the diaspora, sometimes in Honolulu.
Central to the practice of celebrating Christmas, though, is food—and food galore.
The best menus come to town, so to say, in a tongue-in-cheek way, and are laid on the Christmas table.
But this is for those who have the means.
Those who have lesser in life have to contend with some other ways to celebrate Christmas the best way they know how: that aroskaldo, or rice porridge, with margarine to taste, and with some slices of chicken meat thrown in to suggest abundance and celebration.
In schools, there is that almost mandatory gift-giving, that, across the years, has given rise to so many names: manito-manita, grab-bag, or binnunotan.
All these are poor intimations of what is beneath the act of that God-made-man: his act of self-surrender, of getting into the human story by assuming flesh.
It is, of course, the big story Jesus the Christ.
At the other end of the human spectrum of the frenzied lives of people, and their complex wish for happiness is the subtext of commerce and gain.
It is Christmas that has been transformed into bargain sales, discounted rates, and that ubiquitous box wrapped in colorful ribbons, that, if you do not have, will make you less of a person.
This is Christmas turned upside down.
This is Christmas giving in to the power of profit.
At day-end, however, is the constant reminder that with the puto, bibingka, and usual Christmas party, we need to remember: that behind all this is the message: that we learn to give ourselves to others.
For a family in Hawaii, there is no better way of celebrating Christmas other than spending some quality time together.
It is this presence that reveals to us about the salving, the redeeming.
Happy Christmas, everyone!
FAO/Dec 2011
For the almost twenty-five percent of the population of Hawaii who descended from the various ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines, Christmas in the land of exile is not the same as Christmas in the homeland.
The comparison is real, the nostalgia palpable.
For the many who have had a taste of what Christmas was in the home country, the contradictions of the celebration itself dwarf the message it brings to us: the coming into world of a God-made-man.
The master narrative—the grand story of epic proportion that has informed this practice introduced by the Spanish colonizers largely from the medieval interpretation of the Catholic faith—shaped and formed the Philippine understanding of what Christmas is all about.
It is a story of human salvation—all the salvation announced to mankind by an angel.
In the Philippines, as this story took root across centuries, the folk traditions had their way of interpreting what this was.
This paved the way to the summoning of the indigenous dramatic traditions that eventually paved the way to the ‘panagpadanon,’ or ‘panagpatuloy’ or sometimes known in the Tagalog regions as the ‘panunuloyan.’
Here, in this folkloric rendering into a dramatic genre of the story of the first family looking for a place to stay for the night, we have a pregnant Mary in her full term and Joseph, the saintly man who stood by his wife in thick or thin, that wife who bore a child ‘without knowing any man.’
Versions of this are everywhere in the Philippines, as is the renditions of this in stylize form in the diaspora, sometimes in Honolulu.
Central to the practice of celebrating Christmas, though, is food—and food galore.
The best menus come to town, so to say, in a tongue-in-cheek way, and are laid on the Christmas table.
But this is for those who have the means.
Those who have lesser in life have to contend with some other ways to celebrate Christmas the best way they know how: that aroskaldo, or rice porridge, with margarine to taste, and with some slices of chicken meat thrown in to suggest abundance and celebration.
In schools, there is that almost mandatory gift-giving, that, across the years, has given rise to so many names: manito-manita, grab-bag, or binnunotan.
All these are poor intimations of what is beneath the act of that God-made-man: his act of self-surrender, of getting into the human story by assuming flesh.
It is, of course, the big story Jesus the Christ.
At the other end of the human spectrum of the frenzied lives of people, and their complex wish for happiness is the subtext of commerce and gain.
It is Christmas that has been transformed into bargain sales, discounted rates, and that ubiquitous box wrapped in colorful ribbons, that, if you do not have, will make you less of a person.
This is Christmas turned upside down.
This is Christmas giving in to the power of profit.
At day-end, however, is the constant reminder that with the puto, bibingka, and usual Christmas party, we need to remember: that behind all this is the message: that we learn to give ourselves to others.
For a family in Hawaii, there is no better way of celebrating Christmas other than spending some quality time together.
It is this presence that reveals to us about the salving, the redeeming.
Happy Christmas, everyone!
FAO/Dec 2011
FAO EDITORIAL. December 2011
The Meaning of Hope
“I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope,” so says Aeschylus in the Agamemnon.
Given the challenges of our days, we are all exiles now, out into a world whose challenges are difficult to name.
We live in interesting times, indeed, and these present themselves to us in various ways, but with the same storyline at day-end: there is hardship in our days.
The statistics of our American lives speaks of something so different from that dream through which we have found the road to here, in these shores and beyond.
Our children, so the news says, are at the receiving end, with their education at stake with the new talks of budget cuts, of controlling government spending, and of removing subsidies for the poorer families.
The numbers do not tell us something better: about one of every four children is deemed poor.
With job prospects dim, and unemployment at a rate that does not suggest some light at the end of our bleak world, we welcome the birth of a man-god with these thoughts.
In Oahu, the corporal work of mercy—the feeding of the homeless—has become a ritual for some people of the Philippines who have found their lot in life a bit better than those who sleep on road pavements and in parks.
They are the same people who were swept away like dust during the week of the Asian Pacific Economic Conference, and hidden somewhere for the delegates of the other twenty-one countries to not see.
For this is Paradise—and as such, the beggars and the homeless and the poor and the wretched are not to be found here.
These are the thoughts that hit us hard as we hum our way to the day of Christmas, thinking of silent nights and mistletoes and some Santa Claus coming from somewhere riding on a sled pulled by a reindeer with a human name.
In our tropical days, the images are not even apt, and yet we swallow these hook, line, and sinker presuming that this might give us good luck.
At the back of all these is the loss of the meaning of Christmas, and that meaning that relates to a living hope that the man-god gave us.
Despair is easier to name when one cannot hope any longer.
And so this leads us back to our duty: to give hope to the hopeless.
Some one said that: ‘Never deprive someone hope; it might all they have.’
In deed, in a world such as ours, we need to go back to the meaning of meaning itself, and say, that in life as in our need to live on, ‘Hope is only love of life.’
There is much promise of Christmas.
There is much promise of this man-god of history, this man-god of our times, this man-god of our dreary days.
That promise is none but the promise of hope.
We keep this promise of hope, indeed, a dream because it is the only one we have got.
We can only hope for the best, even as we say that hope will spring eternally from the heart that loves.
Merry Christmas—and the best of the New Year to everyone!
Published/FAO
Dec 2011
“I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope,” so says Aeschylus in the Agamemnon.
Given the challenges of our days, we are all exiles now, out into a world whose challenges are difficult to name.
We live in interesting times, indeed, and these present themselves to us in various ways, but with the same storyline at day-end: there is hardship in our days.
The statistics of our American lives speaks of something so different from that dream through which we have found the road to here, in these shores and beyond.
Our children, so the news says, are at the receiving end, with their education at stake with the new talks of budget cuts, of controlling government spending, and of removing subsidies for the poorer families.
The numbers do not tell us something better: about one of every four children is deemed poor.
With job prospects dim, and unemployment at a rate that does not suggest some light at the end of our bleak world, we welcome the birth of a man-god with these thoughts.
In Oahu, the corporal work of mercy—the feeding of the homeless—has become a ritual for some people of the Philippines who have found their lot in life a bit better than those who sleep on road pavements and in parks.
They are the same people who were swept away like dust during the week of the Asian Pacific Economic Conference, and hidden somewhere for the delegates of the other twenty-one countries to not see.
For this is Paradise—and as such, the beggars and the homeless and the poor and the wretched are not to be found here.
These are the thoughts that hit us hard as we hum our way to the day of Christmas, thinking of silent nights and mistletoes and some Santa Claus coming from somewhere riding on a sled pulled by a reindeer with a human name.
In our tropical days, the images are not even apt, and yet we swallow these hook, line, and sinker presuming that this might give us good luck.
At the back of all these is the loss of the meaning of Christmas, and that meaning that relates to a living hope that the man-god gave us.
Despair is easier to name when one cannot hope any longer.
And so this leads us back to our duty: to give hope to the hopeless.
Some one said that: ‘Never deprive someone hope; it might all they have.’
In deed, in a world such as ours, we need to go back to the meaning of meaning itself, and say, that in life as in our need to live on, ‘Hope is only love of life.’
There is much promise of Christmas.
There is much promise of this man-god of history, this man-god of our times, this man-god of our dreary days.
That promise is none but the promise of hope.
We keep this promise of hope, indeed, a dream because it is the only one we have got.
We can only hope for the best, even as we say that hope will spring eternally from the heart that loves.
Merry Christmas—and the best of the New Year to everyone!
Published/FAO
Dec 2011
REDEMPTION, A NOVEL. Chapter 2.
(The novel 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 to live life they could 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. The novel is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the particularities and demands of time, losing awareness of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving her 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 to inaugurate their own redemption.)
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 are in the fine prints of our family’s 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 form 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.
Their 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. The older sons did, his grave perched on one side of the hill overlooking the brook that irrigates our corn and coffee. So here, in these parts, is the memory of the difficult life of going through the terror of forgetting. If this land will be foreclosed, there is no way we can recover who we are.
Or 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 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, for Christsakes!
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 me 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.
Oh I cleaned the dirt and dust of the convent, helped in the kitchen, did the laundry. And I prayed and prayed a lot too.
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, and 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, and they thought 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 to her 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, in Baguio, that city by the hill carved out of our tropical heat by the colonizing Americans who needed to imagine what mountain air was in order to survive in the Philippines.
Josefa had bright eyes as a child. There was laughter and joy and contentment in those eyes that spoke of innocence mother knew nothing about.
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 people on a June day when at school we had all those elaborate ritual on flag raising and reciting our oath to love our country and motherland.
I remember 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, beloved teachers, parents, guests, ladies and gentlemen: I come before you 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 to 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 dead child’s 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 to be my Tatang.
Or the Tatang that in death I realized 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, I 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 sides, 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 any place to run to. 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 fifteen 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 thirteen. 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 a revolution of its own.
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.
Because they are of our people.
Because they are of our earth, our piece of the earth.
With all my love now,
Manang Ria
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 are in the fine prints of our family’s 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 form 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.
Their 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. The older sons did, his grave perched on one side of the hill overlooking the brook that irrigates our corn and coffee. So here, in these parts, is the memory of the difficult life of going through the terror of forgetting. If this land will be foreclosed, there is no way we can recover who we are.
Or 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 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, for Christsakes!
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 me 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.
Oh I cleaned the dirt and dust of the convent, helped in the kitchen, did the laundry. And I prayed and prayed a lot too.
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, and 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, and they thought 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 to her 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, in Baguio, that city by the hill carved out of our tropical heat by the colonizing Americans who needed to imagine what mountain air was in order to survive in the Philippines.
Josefa had bright eyes as a child. There was laughter and joy and contentment in those eyes that spoke of innocence mother knew nothing about.
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 people on a June day when at school we had all those elaborate ritual on flag raising and reciting our oath to love our country and motherland.
I remember 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, beloved teachers, parents, guests, ladies and gentlemen: I come before you 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 to 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 dead child’s 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 to be my Tatang.
Or the Tatang that in death I realized 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, I 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 sides, 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 any place to run to. 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 fifteen 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 thirteen. 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 a revolution of its own.
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.
Because they are of our people.
Because they are of our earth, our piece of the earth.
With all my love now,
Manang Ria
REDEMPTION, A NOVEL. Chapter 1.
REDEMPTION
By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
(The novel 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 to live life they could 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. The novel is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the particularities and demands of time, losing awareness of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving her 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 to inaugurate their own redemption.)
Chapter One
November 1, 2005
Waipio, Hawaii
Manang Ria,
I could not have said it in words.
I could have forgotten the right words even before I could utter any rational sound if I said this on the phone.
This is why I have chosen to write to you.
It is the time of the Internet but I have chosen to write to you the old-fashioned way.
I want our daughters to have a handle of what we have gone through and so I am leaving this letter as some kind of a trace, a palimpsest if you wish. Through this, my daughters will be able to begin to form their idea of our sad story. With this story, I hope that all our daughters will find grace and relief, that redeeming grace and redeeming relief we all have been looking for a long, long while.
It is evening here and as I light a candle in front of my house down here on Waipio that looks out on the lonely Pearl Harbor, I can sense the pain you are going through.
Darkness envelops the valley now and I could hardly imagine the silent vastness around me. Only the flickering lights come with their flimsy radiance, subdued as they are by the hidden sorrows the young night offers.
I think of myself now more often, me as an exile, an exile in so many ways. An exile through and through. A wandering, aimlessly roaming exile. I cry each time I realize I have run away from our common memories and from the land of our sufferings.
There is much pain in me as well.
This pain has no name and if you can help christen it, I will owe you my deepest gratitude. I will owe you my redemption too.
I do not know if I can ever forgive you for a past that we both do not have full control of anyway.
Perhaps, I miss so much the distinction between what you were capable of doing and that which the events in our lives simply pushed us into doing.
We were young, Manang.
We were so young—and unknowing.
And hungry.
And famished.
And unloved.
And impoverished.
There we were in that remote past of our lives fighting it out with the morsel of love that our parents were not capable of giving in the first place.
Things are not clear to me as of yet.
But I am beginning to see the bigger picture however faint the seeing is.
Many questions do come to haunt me.
Like, am I really your sister? Do I belong to you despite that fact that we do not share memories together?
Even as I ask these questions, other questions come cropping up like some kind of a ghost that does not know finitude but the eternity of lurking in shadows, in bad dreams, in phantasms.
Indeed, it is true. I have lived through all these and even from afar, I can say, I can say from my heart that I do not know you.
Well, I do not know myself either.
At a distance, I can see the hatred you have for Nanang.
I see this hatred transforming into some kind of matter, solid and hard as if it were a hardwood.
Or cement, able to withstand all the storm and the quake and the typhoon in the ravaged country, in the Ilocos as elsewhere in all of the islands where to go through the vagaries of the seasons is as quotidian as our own pains, our lamentations, our tears, our fears.
Manang, I had been so afraid of going hungry again.
Or going through the motions of everyday life without seeing any hint at that which is salvific.
I know—and deep in my heart I understand now—of your hatred for Nanang like the earthen tile that walled the convents of friars in our town in order for our ancestors to be shielded from the evil that they did, the abuses they seemed to have a natural fondness for.
O the friars!
We came from them, Manang. We came from them, from their sins and excesses and their promise of heaven.
On our mother’s side are the Martinezes of San Carlos.
They came from the illicit relationship of one Dominican friar with one of our own and the affair, consummated in the dark chambers of the convento down towards the river, bore the first ever of the Aguilars that gave us our mother’s father.
The Solvers, ha! They were land grabbers and manipulators.
Like all those mestizos who learned to live close to the municipio and close to the church and close to hearing the bells each time the Angelus was recited, the Aguilars took center stage in the affairs of the local government.
With the blessings of the friars that seemed to be as avaricious and greedy as the Aguilar whose skin had now turned to something lighter than light, something that resembled the Castilas, they gained entry to the civic affairs of the locality.
One of the Aguilars became a factotum of the gobernadorcillo. That was the beginning of more land grabbing, and the beginning as well of the Aguilars going outside San Carlos and moving to Dagupan and then eventually to the Ilocos and Isabela.
There, they had the land grants courtesy of the conniving friars, the Spanish rulers using the Aguilars for ends that had something to do with their occupational and colonial motives.
The Aguilar women played their role to the hilt as well with two of them bearing illicit sons from the illicit affairs of two more Castilas. The sons, bless them, did not live long to tell of their stories of being bastards as we all were—are.
This is going to be a long story, Manang.
I am taking the last light of the young evening to reclaim myself.
I have been running away from our memories.
I have been running away from the terrors and torments of Nanang as well even if at times I would have wanted to end it all, this striving to make ourselves saved, redeemed, forgiven.
I tell you it has not been easy, this constant running away.
Even from afar, from the islands that speak volumes of what possibilities there are for us over here, I am running away from our shadows.
And from our sad sad lives.
Our sad sad life story.
And now I say: I do not to go through this sadness again. No, not ever.
Even as I face the darkness of the night, I think of your there, all of you. This time, I am particularly thinking of you and our three other sisters.
I am not so certain if we are linked in a way with a biological father.
I am certain of one fact though: That we come from the same mother.
That we were nourished by the same body, our mother’s wild wild body, with her wild wild craving for anything that could challenge the sacred and the moral, the true and the beautiful, the good and the virtuous.
For mother did not know any of those, I suppose.
In these last lights, I can see what fragile stuff she was—is—made of.
Her imagination romped wild, went away with the many men that came after her, ran away with them to some far away places only to return to Tatang one more time.
That was a ritual, a given.
That going away and running away with her men happened many times.
Tatang was the father I did not know.
Tatang is the same father I now know.
Well, I never got to call him father.
I never even had the chance to hold his hands, feel the roughness of the calluses in those hands, feel the terror that hid in those hands, feel the sorrows hidden in between his tired fingers.
What a sad tale, this idea that I could have had the chance to get to know my biological father but the circumstances did not permit me to even say hello to him, not in a single instance that I could remember despite the fact that the little village we lived in all knew that which I should have known.
I only heard the knowledge in whispers. Do not blame me.
Now that father is gone, I do not know if I can ever forgive myself.
This business about us, five daughters of our mother of perpetual parody, what tough luck! Five daughters of three different fathers, well, that is something we can never run away from now.
We have to face this now with courage.
We have to face this now with daring.
How I wish I had that courage to tell Nanang what I have in my mind.
I cannot talk to Ditas about this.
I cannot give a hint to Lorena about what we all had to go through to destroy ourselves.
I cannot open up to Rosario about what evil visited us.
I look at the evening darkness now. There is this soft wind on my face. I feel the elements oneing with me, joining me in this sorrow, joining me in this hope for the morrow.
I close this note now, fold it three times the way Nanang taught me when I was six.
In her rare moment of sanity when Nanang was not running away, she would sit down with me and tell me stories about the hacienda of his father in Angadan or some such other exotic places to the Sierra Madres that spelled something sweet and hopeful like Sinamar.
She told me about the letters she would send to her Bai Regina in Dagupan.
The matriarch of the clan, Bai Regina had all the lands to her name.
Her two other sisters gave up their right to the land.
One of them was in the convent as mistress of novices in Baguio and who would forever dedicate her life to the cause of redeeming her family from sin. From the vestiges of original sin, she would say, in her fluid and frank Spanish.
The other sister was in Manila renting out her apartment rows to callboys and prostitutes and drug pushers aside from the regular and decent families who would come in for some time but leave right after discerning that they were in bad company. This other sister did not need much. She had sent her children to good schools and one ended up serving a President in Malacañang while her husband served as one of the Presidents close-in security.
Nanang wrote those letters as if there were no tomorrow, in a penmanship she learned in convent school in Baguio before the demons got into her head and eloped with Tatang to run away from the hard life of starting it out in the vast and rugged land of her father.
Nanang hated the land.
She wanted the glamorous life of the vaudeville, the superficial laughter, the paid smile, the noise for a fee.
She wanted all the dancing and the teasing on stage and so she dreamed of ending up like Atang dela Rama.
On hilltops, Nanang imagined life in Manila, in the cities, in movie houses, in theatres.
Nanang recited from memory the story of how her family had to leave Dagupan.
Her father ran over two schoolboys. They died on the spot. The families of the boys asked her father to leave Dagupan or else his whole family would be killed.
And so they had to run away, the whole family, run to where the vast lands were, rugged and needing coaxing and care and concern.
Three folds, neat and nifty for the letters. The same holds for this letter to you.
Three folds, as if in the trinity of our solemn wish to be able to forgive ourselves, to forgive mother, and to forgive each other.
Bye-bye for now, Manang.
With all my love,
Lagrimas
By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
(The novel 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 to live life they could 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. The novel is an allegory of the Filipino condition, with the mother going nuts and out of her senses, losing sight of the particularities and demands of time, losing awareness of the healing power of forgiveness, and leaving her 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 to inaugurate their own redemption.)
Chapter One
November 1, 2005
Waipio, Hawaii
Manang Ria,
I could not have said it in words.
I could have forgotten the right words even before I could utter any rational sound if I said this on the phone.
This is why I have chosen to write to you.
It is the time of the Internet but I have chosen to write to you the old-fashioned way.
I want our daughters to have a handle of what we have gone through and so I am leaving this letter as some kind of a trace, a palimpsest if you wish. Through this, my daughters will be able to begin to form their idea of our sad story. With this story, I hope that all our daughters will find grace and relief, that redeeming grace and redeeming relief we all have been looking for a long, long while.
It is evening here and as I light a candle in front of my house down here on Waipio that looks out on the lonely Pearl Harbor, I can sense the pain you are going through.
Darkness envelops the valley now and I could hardly imagine the silent vastness around me. Only the flickering lights come with their flimsy radiance, subdued as they are by the hidden sorrows the young night offers.
I think of myself now more often, me as an exile, an exile in so many ways. An exile through and through. A wandering, aimlessly roaming exile. I cry each time I realize I have run away from our common memories and from the land of our sufferings.
There is much pain in me as well.
This pain has no name and if you can help christen it, I will owe you my deepest gratitude. I will owe you my redemption too.
I do not know if I can ever forgive you for a past that we both do not have full control of anyway.
Perhaps, I miss so much the distinction between what you were capable of doing and that which the events in our lives simply pushed us into doing.
We were young, Manang.
We were so young—and unknowing.
And hungry.
And famished.
And unloved.
And impoverished.
There we were in that remote past of our lives fighting it out with the morsel of love that our parents were not capable of giving in the first place.
Things are not clear to me as of yet.
But I am beginning to see the bigger picture however faint the seeing is.
Many questions do come to haunt me.
Like, am I really your sister? Do I belong to you despite that fact that we do not share memories together?
Even as I ask these questions, other questions come cropping up like some kind of a ghost that does not know finitude but the eternity of lurking in shadows, in bad dreams, in phantasms.
Indeed, it is true. I have lived through all these and even from afar, I can say, I can say from my heart that I do not know you.
Well, I do not know myself either.
At a distance, I can see the hatred you have for Nanang.
I see this hatred transforming into some kind of matter, solid and hard as if it were a hardwood.
Or cement, able to withstand all the storm and the quake and the typhoon in the ravaged country, in the Ilocos as elsewhere in all of the islands where to go through the vagaries of the seasons is as quotidian as our own pains, our lamentations, our tears, our fears.
Manang, I had been so afraid of going hungry again.
Or going through the motions of everyday life without seeing any hint at that which is salvific.
I know—and deep in my heart I understand now—of your hatred for Nanang like the earthen tile that walled the convents of friars in our town in order for our ancestors to be shielded from the evil that they did, the abuses they seemed to have a natural fondness for.
O the friars!
We came from them, Manang. We came from them, from their sins and excesses and their promise of heaven.
On our mother’s side are the Martinezes of San Carlos.
They came from the illicit relationship of one Dominican friar with one of our own and the affair, consummated in the dark chambers of the convento down towards the river, bore the first ever of the Aguilars that gave us our mother’s father.
The Solvers, ha! They were land grabbers and manipulators.
Like all those mestizos who learned to live close to the municipio and close to the church and close to hearing the bells each time the Angelus was recited, the Aguilars took center stage in the affairs of the local government.
With the blessings of the friars that seemed to be as avaricious and greedy as the Aguilar whose skin had now turned to something lighter than light, something that resembled the Castilas, they gained entry to the civic affairs of the locality.
One of the Aguilars became a factotum of the gobernadorcillo. That was the beginning of more land grabbing, and the beginning as well of the Aguilars going outside San Carlos and moving to Dagupan and then eventually to the Ilocos and Isabela.
There, they had the land grants courtesy of the conniving friars, the Spanish rulers using the Aguilars for ends that had something to do with their occupational and colonial motives.
The Aguilar women played their role to the hilt as well with two of them bearing illicit sons from the illicit affairs of two more Castilas. The sons, bless them, did not live long to tell of their stories of being bastards as we all were—are.
This is going to be a long story, Manang.
I am taking the last light of the young evening to reclaim myself.
I have been running away from our memories.
I have been running away from the terrors and torments of Nanang as well even if at times I would have wanted to end it all, this striving to make ourselves saved, redeemed, forgiven.
I tell you it has not been easy, this constant running away.
Even from afar, from the islands that speak volumes of what possibilities there are for us over here, I am running away from our shadows.
And from our sad sad lives.
Our sad sad life story.
And now I say: I do not to go through this sadness again. No, not ever.
Even as I face the darkness of the night, I think of your there, all of you. This time, I am particularly thinking of you and our three other sisters.
I am not so certain if we are linked in a way with a biological father.
I am certain of one fact though: That we come from the same mother.
That we were nourished by the same body, our mother’s wild wild body, with her wild wild craving for anything that could challenge the sacred and the moral, the true and the beautiful, the good and the virtuous.
For mother did not know any of those, I suppose.
In these last lights, I can see what fragile stuff she was—is—made of.
Her imagination romped wild, went away with the many men that came after her, ran away with them to some far away places only to return to Tatang one more time.
That was a ritual, a given.
That going away and running away with her men happened many times.
Tatang was the father I did not know.
Tatang is the same father I now know.
Well, I never got to call him father.
I never even had the chance to hold his hands, feel the roughness of the calluses in those hands, feel the terror that hid in those hands, feel the sorrows hidden in between his tired fingers.
What a sad tale, this idea that I could have had the chance to get to know my biological father but the circumstances did not permit me to even say hello to him, not in a single instance that I could remember despite the fact that the little village we lived in all knew that which I should have known.
I only heard the knowledge in whispers. Do not blame me.
Now that father is gone, I do not know if I can ever forgive myself.
This business about us, five daughters of our mother of perpetual parody, what tough luck! Five daughters of three different fathers, well, that is something we can never run away from now.
We have to face this now with courage.
We have to face this now with daring.
How I wish I had that courage to tell Nanang what I have in my mind.
I cannot talk to Ditas about this.
I cannot give a hint to Lorena about what we all had to go through to destroy ourselves.
I cannot open up to Rosario about what evil visited us.
I look at the evening darkness now. There is this soft wind on my face. I feel the elements oneing with me, joining me in this sorrow, joining me in this hope for the morrow.
I close this note now, fold it three times the way Nanang taught me when I was six.
In her rare moment of sanity when Nanang was not running away, she would sit down with me and tell me stories about the hacienda of his father in Angadan or some such other exotic places to the Sierra Madres that spelled something sweet and hopeful like Sinamar.
She told me about the letters she would send to her Bai Regina in Dagupan.
The matriarch of the clan, Bai Regina had all the lands to her name.
Her two other sisters gave up their right to the land.
One of them was in the convent as mistress of novices in Baguio and who would forever dedicate her life to the cause of redeeming her family from sin. From the vestiges of original sin, she would say, in her fluid and frank Spanish.
The other sister was in Manila renting out her apartment rows to callboys and prostitutes and drug pushers aside from the regular and decent families who would come in for some time but leave right after discerning that they were in bad company. This other sister did not need much. She had sent her children to good schools and one ended up serving a President in Malacañang while her husband served as one of the Presidents close-in security.
Nanang wrote those letters as if there were no tomorrow, in a penmanship she learned in convent school in Baguio before the demons got into her head and eloped with Tatang to run away from the hard life of starting it out in the vast and rugged land of her father.
Nanang hated the land.
She wanted the glamorous life of the vaudeville, the superficial laughter, the paid smile, the noise for a fee.
She wanted all the dancing and the teasing on stage and so she dreamed of ending up like Atang dela Rama.
On hilltops, Nanang imagined life in Manila, in the cities, in movie houses, in theatres.
Nanang recited from memory the story of how her family had to leave Dagupan.
Her father ran over two schoolboys. They died on the spot. The families of the boys asked her father to leave Dagupan or else his whole family would be killed.
And so they had to run away, the whole family, run to where the vast lands were, rugged and needing coaxing and care and concern.
Three folds, neat and nifty for the letters. The same holds for this letter to you.
Three folds, as if in the trinity of our solemn wish to be able to forgive ourselves, to forgive mother, and to forgive each other.
Bye-bye for now, Manang.
With all my love,
Lagrimas
The University of Hawaii Ilokano Program
The Waipahu High School Ilokano Program
The UH GEAR-Up/OMSS Challenge Grant
The GEAR-Up Club of Waipahu High
Nakem Conferences & Nakem Youth
The Word From Waipahu
Writeshops for a Change
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD
Writeshop Director & Facilitator
DAY 1
In the Beginning Was the Word
December 19, 2011
0900 AM-12PM
Waipahu High School
Farrington Highway
Waipahu, Hawaii
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“In the Beginning Was The Word”
Day 1, December 19, 2011
0900AM-12PM
The Nature of Writing
The Nature of Creative Writing
Language and Human Expression
Language and the Significant Human Experience
Diction and More
Finding Ways to Find Your Voice
Your Voice and More
Other Voices, Other Speech
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“The Word is the World”
Day 2, December 20, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Making Sense of That Which Makes Sense
Writing Makes Sense
Expressions That Make Sense
Sense and the World
Writing That Makes Sense
Writing Makes Sense of the World
A Voice That Makes Sense
Other Voices, Other Worlds
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“Word Becoming World”
Day 3, December 21, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Making Sense of the World
Writing Makes Sense of the World
Expressions That Make Sense of the World
Sense and the World of Waipahu
Writing That Makes Sense of the Waipahu World
Writing Makes Sense of the World in Waipahu
A Voice That Makes Sense of Waipahu and Beyond
Other Voices in Waipahu, Other Worlds in Waipahu
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“Wor(l)ding/Wor(l)dings”
Day 4, December 22, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Word and the World: Craft and Art
Wor(l)ding: Essentials
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 1: Fixing It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 2: Revisiting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 3: Recasting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 4: Rewriting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 5: Rewriting the Rewrite
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 6: Self-Editing
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“In The End is the Word Becoming World”
Day 5, December 23, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Day 5, December 23, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Writing is Writing It!
Craft and Some More
Making it More Creative
The Old Word, The New World
The New World, The Old Word
Making All Things New
Making All Things Interesting
Creative Writing and the Creative Vision
We wish to thank the following for their help:
• Trixie Soria, Ilokano Language Coordinator, Waipahu High School/UH GEAR-Up
• Rachelle Aurellano, Ilokano Language Teacher, Waipahu High School/UH GEAR-Up
The GEAR-Up Club of Waipahu High
• Glenda Duldulao, Fellow for the Ilokano Program, UH Manoa
• Ie Agcaoili & Camille Agcaoili for the artwork and for assisting in the writeshops
• UH Manoa Ilokano Program
• UH SEED/GEAR-Up
• UH OMSS/Challenge Grant
• Nakem Conferences
• Nakem Youth
• Guild of Ilokano Writers Global/TMI Global
The Waipahu High School Ilokano Program
The UH GEAR-Up/OMSS Challenge Grant
The GEAR-Up Club of Waipahu High
Nakem Conferences & Nakem Youth
The Word From Waipahu
Writeshops for a Change
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD
Writeshop Director & Facilitator
DAY 1
In the Beginning Was the Word
December 19, 2011
0900 AM-12PM
Waipahu High School
Farrington Highway
Waipahu, Hawaii
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“In the Beginning Was The Word”
Day 1, December 19, 2011
0900AM-12PM
The Nature of Writing
The Nature of Creative Writing
Language and Human Expression
Language and the Significant Human Experience
Diction and More
Finding Ways to Find Your Voice
Your Voice and More
Other Voices, Other Speech
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“The Word is the World”
Day 2, December 20, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Making Sense of That Which Makes Sense
Writing Makes Sense
Expressions That Make Sense
Sense and the World
Writing That Makes Sense
Writing Makes Sense of the World
A Voice That Makes Sense
Other Voices, Other Worlds
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“Word Becoming World”
Day 3, December 21, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Making Sense of the World
Writing Makes Sense of the World
Expressions That Make Sense of the World
Sense and the World of Waipahu
Writing That Makes Sense of the Waipahu World
Writing Makes Sense of the World in Waipahu
A Voice That Makes Sense of Waipahu and Beyond
Other Voices in Waipahu, Other Worlds in Waipahu
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“Wor(l)ding/Wor(l)dings”
Day 4, December 22, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Word and the World: Craft and Art
Wor(l)ding: Essentials
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 1: Fixing It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 2: Revisiting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 3: Recasting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 4: Rewriting It
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 5: Rewriting the Rewrite
Wor(l)ding Techniques, 6: Self-Editing
WRITESHOPS FOR A CHANGE
“In The End is the Word Becoming World”
Day 5, December 23, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Day 5, December 23, 2011
0900AM-12PM
Writing is Writing It!
Craft and Some More
Making it More Creative
The Old Word, The New World
The New World, The Old Word
Making All Things New
Making All Things Interesting
Creative Writing and the Creative Vision
We wish to thank the following for their help:
• Trixie Soria, Ilokano Language Coordinator, Waipahu High School/UH GEAR-Up
• Rachelle Aurellano, Ilokano Language Teacher, Waipahu High School/UH GEAR-Up
The GEAR-Up Club of Waipahu High
• Glenda Duldulao, Fellow for the Ilokano Program, UH Manoa
• Ie Agcaoili & Camille Agcaoili for the artwork and for assisting in the writeshops
• UH Manoa Ilokano Program
• UH SEED/GEAR-Up
• UH OMSS/Challenge Grant
• Nakem Conferences
• Nakem Youth
• Guild of Ilokano Writers Global/TMI Global
Letter to a Firstborn, 2
SEVEN TIMES SEVEN YEARS OF SOLITUDE: RIZAL,
HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE
Dear Ayi, a firstborn:
Yesterday, you emailed me about what is happening back there in the home country. You know well that even from afar, I keep tab of what is dished out by spin doctors who are in the business of tampering with history—or if you so wish, this business of writing history from their perspective, from their dominant position as power-holders who, for centuries and centuries on end, have not let up with their project and program of rationalized greed, wanton accumulation, and systematic prevarication to perpetuate, in an unceasing way, their stranglehold on us.
You are right, son, you are absolutely right. These people, though born of the land, have not learned from the lessons of the past. You were citing Jose Rizal in your letter, your phraseology renewing the same wisdom he shared with us in order for us to learn and see and know and understand. You said: the book of the past is a book of knowledge since it is the repository of all the things that give us a handle, a direction, a sense of self, an idea of what is to come. You said too: we need to take to heart this book of the past in much the same way we need air to breathe, air to live.
I do not know what to say even if I am your father and in linear time, in a reckoning that cuts up history into empty moments, time, and events, I am the past and you are the present and the future. I can only laugh now and from my perch here abroad where the wind is cold and the mornings are foggy and the future of other lands and peoples are also divined and dictated in the war rooms of generals and presidents who have appointed themselves as guardians of democracy and Christianity, I see the distance between us: a distance in time, a distance in mind-set, a distance in the manner of loving our very land, our very heartland.
You say you want to take part in the remaking of history when I warned you of your going to the anti-war rallies, you and the rest of the young in the state university crying out loud that warning to the president and her cohorts and allies and jesters about their not knowing history and not learning from the past. You were quoting Santayana, son—well, not exactly citing him but you and your battalion of idealists were restate his case: Those who do not learn from history will be condemned to repeat it. You all were a mile away from the pretenders of intellect of the inangbayan, they who can only know how to corrupt Rizal and Santayana and the wise philosophers of old who talked of justice and love and peace and equality as not separate dreams but concrete realities that are part of a continuum.
Perhaps they did not read Diokno or they never understand how he articulated that intertwining of history and collective dream and the task of nation building.
Land and liberty, he said are extensions of each other.
So do justice and jobs.
So do food and freedom.
What a way of reading history—of opening up its can of worms in order to name our pains, christen our sorrows, diagnose our seven times seven years of solitude! Ah, that biblical number comes to me like a ghost lurking at the back of my head even as I try to distance myself from this little talk we have—a father and son talk, if you so wish to call it that way.
But I would like to believe that the reverse is truer: That you set this whole discourse into motion, you who are so young and yet pestering me with our business towards the future.
Is it the case that you have read so much about the need to reread our history by reclaiming our stories and allow the real actors to come forward and narrate of their actions and courage and boldness and daring? May the good Lord of life and history, you who are so young and yet who are conscious of our destiny be blessed more and more. The Lord of liberty and freedom and justice is the Lord of history, son. The incarnation story, minus all the gender and sexuality references, tells us so much about history power and truth in our quest for meaning and substance and redemption.
These people whom today play on our fate and our future are the very people who have come on our shores and took part in our feasting uninvited.
I heard you translating this long duration of oppression of our people into a mystical metaphor that harks back to two covenants of Israel, the old one that was so obsessed with the law of law and the second one that pillared on the law of love. This oppression has been going on for a long time in human history and history itself has sided, it seems, those who have the cunning and gumption to rule over other unjustly.
You called this phenomenon as “the seven time seven years of solitude of our people” a la Gabriel Marquez in his artistic treatise of the solitude of the Latin American peoples and their centuries of oppression under Spain and Portugal and their allies, the priests and other religious leaders most specially. Perhaps you were thinking of Rizal’s conclusion that when a country does not have the boldness and daring to open the books of its past, that country will never have stake of the future?
You said you are worried about the future and in your youth, at eighteen and in your prime, I should tell you that you have no cause for worry. But to be honest: I have so much cause for worry even as you also tell me that perhaps there is a fair, fighting chance with that actor who never died in any of his films but always ended up vanquishing the cruel overlord and then, of course, hailed by the people as their hero and redeemer and savior.
Then again you said that this actor might not stand a chance at all since a broadcaster with the baritone to hide his ambition and to convince every foolish voter that he is indeed sincere and ever willing to be crucified on the cross in the name of the last Juan de la Cruz is offering himself up for immolation in the fire of the nation’s politics.
And then of course, the reigning queen in our politics-as-usual collective life wants us to believe her, she with her rice stalks for a bouquet in that multicolored poster splashed on all the city walls and house doors and concrete posts, she with her big American roses smiling sheepishly as if saying: Give me a chance, give me chance.
We must now reckon, however, in the way we must reckon everything in history: that we gave her the presidency on a silver platter in the hope that she would do better than the Erap of the masses, the Erap whose life was a product of programmatic publicity stunt.
Los Angeles
December 30, 2003
HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE
Dear Ayi, a firstborn:
Yesterday, you emailed me about what is happening back there in the home country. You know well that even from afar, I keep tab of what is dished out by spin doctors who are in the business of tampering with history—or if you so wish, this business of writing history from their perspective, from their dominant position as power-holders who, for centuries and centuries on end, have not let up with their project and program of rationalized greed, wanton accumulation, and systematic prevarication to perpetuate, in an unceasing way, their stranglehold on us.
You are right, son, you are absolutely right. These people, though born of the land, have not learned from the lessons of the past. You were citing Jose Rizal in your letter, your phraseology renewing the same wisdom he shared with us in order for us to learn and see and know and understand. You said: the book of the past is a book of knowledge since it is the repository of all the things that give us a handle, a direction, a sense of self, an idea of what is to come. You said too: we need to take to heart this book of the past in much the same way we need air to breathe, air to live.
I do not know what to say even if I am your father and in linear time, in a reckoning that cuts up history into empty moments, time, and events, I am the past and you are the present and the future. I can only laugh now and from my perch here abroad where the wind is cold and the mornings are foggy and the future of other lands and peoples are also divined and dictated in the war rooms of generals and presidents who have appointed themselves as guardians of democracy and Christianity, I see the distance between us: a distance in time, a distance in mind-set, a distance in the manner of loving our very land, our very heartland.
You say you want to take part in the remaking of history when I warned you of your going to the anti-war rallies, you and the rest of the young in the state university crying out loud that warning to the president and her cohorts and allies and jesters about their not knowing history and not learning from the past. You were quoting Santayana, son—well, not exactly citing him but you and your battalion of idealists were restate his case: Those who do not learn from history will be condemned to repeat it. You all were a mile away from the pretenders of intellect of the inangbayan, they who can only know how to corrupt Rizal and Santayana and the wise philosophers of old who talked of justice and love and peace and equality as not separate dreams but concrete realities that are part of a continuum.
Perhaps they did not read Diokno or they never understand how he articulated that intertwining of history and collective dream and the task of nation building.
Land and liberty, he said are extensions of each other.
So do justice and jobs.
So do food and freedom.
What a way of reading history—of opening up its can of worms in order to name our pains, christen our sorrows, diagnose our seven times seven years of solitude! Ah, that biblical number comes to me like a ghost lurking at the back of my head even as I try to distance myself from this little talk we have—a father and son talk, if you so wish to call it that way.
But I would like to believe that the reverse is truer: That you set this whole discourse into motion, you who are so young and yet pestering me with our business towards the future.
Is it the case that you have read so much about the need to reread our history by reclaiming our stories and allow the real actors to come forward and narrate of their actions and courage and boldness and daring? May the good Lord of life and history, you who are so young and yet who are conscious of our destiny be blessed more and more. The Lord of liberty and freedom and justice is the Lord of history, son. The incarnation story, minus all the gender and sexuality references, tells us so much about history power and truth in our quest for meaning and substance and redemption.
These people whom today play on our fate and our future are the very people who have come on our shores and took part in our feasting uninvited.
I heard you translating this long duration of oppression of our people into a mystical metaphor that harks back to two covenants of Israel, the old one that was so obsessed with the law of law and the second one that pillared on the law of love. This oppression has been going on for a long time in human history and history itself has sided, it seems, those who have the cunning and gumption to rule over other unjustly.
You called this phenomenon as “the seven time seven years of solitude of our people” a la Gabriel Marquez in his artistic treatise of the solitude of the Latin American peoples and their centuries of oppression under Spain and Portugal and their allies, the priests and other religious leaders most specially. Perhaps you were thinking of Rizal’s conclusion that when a country does not have the boldness and daring to open the books of its past, that country will never have stake of the future?
You said you are worried about the future and in your youth, at eighteen and in your prime, I should tell you that you have no cause for worry. But to be honest: I have so much cause for worry even as you also tell me that perhaps there is a fair, fighting chance with that actor who never died in any of his films but always ended up vanquishing the cruel overlord and then, of course, hailed by the people as their hero and redeemer and savior.
Then again you said that this actor might not stand a chance at all since a broadcaster with the baritone to hide his ambition and to convince every foolish voter that he is indeed sincere and ever willing to be crucified on the cross in the name of the last Juan de la Cruz is offering himself up for immolation in the fire of the nation’s politics.
And then of course, the reigning queen in our politics-as-usual collective life wants us to believe her, she with her rice stalks for a bouquet in that multicolored poster splashed on all the city walls and house doors and concrete posts, she with her big American roses smiling sheepishly as if saying: Give me a chance, give me chance.
We must now reckon, however, in the way we must reckon everything in history: that we gave her the presidency on a silver platter in the hope that she would do better than the Erap of the masses, the Erap whose life was a product of programmatic publicity stunt.
Los Angeles
December 30, 2003
Daniw Ken Manang Nellie Somera
YOU ARE A POEM NOW
Maysaka Itan a Daniw
Ken Manang Nellie Somera, iti rabii ti mansayagna,
Mililani, Hawaii, Disiembre 9, 2011
You are our poem now, as it has been.
Maysaka itan a daniw,
Kas idi.
Always we see the spark of life in your eyes,
Our elder sister and friend, compatriot
To our exilic laughter and this pain
That goes with your leaving us sooner.
Kankanayon a makitami ti aron ti apuy
Kadagiti matam, sika manangmi, pagayam,
Kadua kadagiti exilo a katawa kas iti daytoy
A leddaang a kabulon ti ipapanaw.
You have come a long way, Manang Nellie.
Adayon ti nagtengmo, Manang Nellie.
You have come a long way into life,
And tonight this is what we tell:
Go, go to that river yonder.
Adayon ti nagtengmo iti biag,
Ket ita a rabii daytoy ti madakamat:
Mapanka iti ballasiw ti karayan.
There, tell again of our dreams,
A lot of those,
The dreams of poets who seek a prayer
From the lines we write to celebrate
What promise of life is there
In this your going away.
Idiay, ibagam manen dagiti tagaineptayo,
Adu kadagitoy,
Tagtagainep dagiti mannaniw nga agbirbirok
Iti kararag manipud iti binatog dagiti naisurat
Tapno iti kasta selebrarantayo ti biag sadiay
Iti daytoy nga inka ipapanaw.
We are certain now, a joyful story
The happy plot of
Our days getting older.
Ammotayon ita, daytoy a naragsak a sarita,
Ti addaan rag-o a singgalot
Dagiti aldawtayo a lumakay.
Somehow, we fix this memory, broken
And then fixed again only to find out
That it is coming to life again.
Uray no kaskasano, taramaanentayo daytoy
A lagip, narakrak tapno tarimaanen manen
Tapno makitatayo nga agungar manen.
For here we are, in life as in death,
Here we are with our promises for you,
Broken, fixed, and then broken again
Rewritten in the recalling,
As we celebrate your passing.
Gapu ta addatayo ditoy, iti biag kas iti ipupusay,
Addakami ditoy kadagiti karimi kenka,
Marakrak, matarimaan, santo marakrak manen
Tapno iti pananglagipmi ket maisurat
Ti rag-o iti ipapanaw.
We wish you to tarry along,
Remain with us
In the cold of days of December,
Dance to the tune of Christmas carols.
Kayatmi koma nga alusiisenka a pumanaw,
Addaka iti sibay
Kadagitoy nalammin nga aldaw ti Disiembre,
Agsala iti tono ti kanta iti Paskua.
You see: the mornings come darker,
And the winter shadows shorter.
Makitam: dagiti bannawag ket nasipsipngetda ita,
Ket dagiti anniniwan iti panaglalam-ek ababbabada.
But our memory of you is forever,
Woven into the lines of your story
You leave behind for us to say each time
You absence fills up the void in us.
Ngem ti lagipmi kenka ket agnanayon,
Naiyabel kadagiti linia ti saritam
Nga ibatim kadakami tapno saritaenmi
No kasta a mariknami ti pannakapunno
Ti ubbaw kadakami.
We see you now with your words:
You are alive, laughing,
and laughing more!
Makitadaka ita kadagiti balikasmo:
Sibibiagka, agkatkatawa,
Ken agkatkatawa pay!
We listen to you in the silence,
And there,
Between our doubts and certainties,
We know we are coming to grief.
Dumngegkam kenka iti ulimek,
Ket sadiay,
Iti baet dagiti duadua ken kinasigurado,
Ammomi nga agsensennaaykami.
We anticipate what is in there,
Past the phrases of our finiteness.
Sinanamakami no ania ti adda sadiay,
Iti labes dagiti frase ti kaaddat’ patinggami.
For tonight, you are a free verse.
You are a stanza, and more,
Moving us away from our lonely imaginings.
Gapu ta ita a rabii, maysaka a verso libre,
Maysa nga istanza ken adu pay,
Iyad-adayonakami iti leddaang iti isip.
You have come to us one last time.
From afar, we know this now:
You are ever-present, and always
You stand there, seeing what can be seen
And with our hearts in lament and in song
We can only bid you goodbye, Manang Nellie,
Elder sister to our longing.
Immayka kadakami iti maudi a gundaway.
Manipud iti adayo, daytoy ti ammomi ita:
Addaka a kankanayon, ket ditaka nga agtakder,
Sikikita kadagiti mabalin a makita
Ket kabulig dagiti pusomi ti dung-aw ken duayya,
Dakami ti agpakada, Manangmi a Nelli,
Manang dagiti adu a pannakaila.
Hon, HI
Dis 9, 2011
Maysaka Itan a Daniw
Ken Manang Nellie Somera, iti rabii ti mansayagna,
Mililani, Hawaii, Disiembre 9, 2011
You are our poem now, as it has been.
Maysaka itan a daniw,
Kas idi.
Always we see the spark of life in your eyes,
Our elder sister and friend, compatriot
To our exilic laughter and this pain
That goes with your leaving us sooner.
Kankanayon a makitami ti aron ti apuy
Kadagiti matam, sika manangmi, pagayam,
Kadua kadagiti exilo a katawa kas iti daytoy
A leddaang a kabulon ti ipapanaw.
You have come a long way, Manang Nellie.
Adayon ti nagtengmo, Manang Nellie.
You have come a long way into life,
And tonight this is what we tell:
Go, go to that river yonder.
Adayon ti nagtengmo iti biag,
Ket ita a rabii daytoy ti madakamat:
Mapanka iti ballasiw ti karayan.
There, tell again of our dreams,
A lot of those,
The dreams of poets who seek a prayer
From the lines we write to celebrate
What promise of life is there
In this your going away.
Idiay, ibagam manen dagiti tagaineptayo,
Adu kadagitoy,
Tagtagainep dagiti mannaniw nga agbirbirok
Iti kararag manipud iti binatog dagiti naisurat
Tapno iti kasta selebrarantayo ti biag sadiay
Iti daytoy nga inka ipapanaw.
We are certain now, a joyful story
The happy plot of
Our days getting older.
Ammotayon ita, daytoy a naragsak a sarita,
Ti addaan rag-o a singgalot
Dagiti aldawtayo a lumakay.
Somehow, we fix this memory, broken
And then fixed again only to find out
That it is coming to life again.
Uray no kaskasano, taramaanentayo daytoy
A lagip, narakrak tapno tarimaanen manen
Tapno makitatayo nga agungar manen.
For here we are, in life as in death,
Here we are with our promises for you,
Broken, fixed, and then broken again
Rewritten in the recalling,
As we celebrate your passing.
Gapu ta addatayo ditoy, iti biag kas iti ipupusay,
Addakami ditoy kadagiti karimi kenka,
Marakrak, matarimaan, santo marakrak manen
Tapno iti pananglagipmi ket maisurat
Ti rag-o iti ipapanaw.
We wish you to tarry along,
Remain with us
In the cold of days of December,
Dance to the tune of Christmas carols.
Kayatmi koma nga alusiisenka a pumanaw,
Addaka iti sibay
Kadagitoy nalammin nga aldaw ti Disiembre,
Agsala iti tono ti kanta iti Paskua.
You see: the mornings come darker,
And the winter shadows shorter.
Makitam: dagiti bannawag ket nasipsipngetda ita,
Ket dagiti anniniwan iti panaglalam-ek ababbabada.
But our memory of you is forever,
Woven into the lines of your story
You leave behind for us to say each time
You absence fills up the void in us.
Ngem ti lagipmi kenka ket agnanayon,
Naiyabel kadagiti linia ti saritam
Nga ibatim kadakami tapno saritaenmi
No kasta a mariknami ti pannakapunno
Ti ubbaw kadakami.
We see you now with your words:
You are alive, laughing,
and laughing more!
Makitadaka ita kadagiti balikasmo:
Sibibiagka, agkatkatawa,
Ken agkatkatawa pay!
We listen to you in the silence,
And there,
Between our doubts and certainties,
We know we are coming to grief.
Dumngegkam kenka iti ulimek,
Ket sadiay,
Iti baet dagiti duadua ken kinasigurado,
Ammomi nga agsensennaaykami.
We anticipate what is in there,
Past the phrases of our finiteness.
Sinanamakami no ania ti adda sadiay,
Iti labes dagiti frase ti kaaddat’ patinggami.
For tonight, you are a free verse.
You are a stanza, and more,
Moving us away from our lonely imaginings.
Gapu ta ita a rabii, maysaka a verso libre,
Maysa nga istanza ken adu pay,
Iyad-adayonakami iti leddaang iti isip.
You have come to us one last time.
From afar, we know this now:
You are ever-present, and always
You stand there, seeing what can be seen
And with our hearts in lament and in song
We can only bid you goodbye, Manang Nellie,
Elder sister to our longing.
Immayka kadakami iti maudi a gundaway.
Manipud iti adayo, daytoy ti ammomi ita:
Addaka a kankanayon, ket ditaka nga agtakder,
Sikikita kadagiti mabalin a makita
Ket kabulig dagiti pusomi ti dung-aw ken duayya,
Dakami ti agpakada, Manangmi a Nelli,
Manang dagiti adu a pannakaila.
Hon, HI
Dis 9, 2011
Wayaway, A Prayer
You are the breeze from this sea,
Wayaway, eastwind, giver of an element
That moves me. It is the crack of dawn
And this dream caught me so while you
Take things in stride, caress the plumeria
Leaf by my window, in this cold of winter.
By the Makakilo mountains, there
You are now and dancing to the tune
Of whizzing lives, on their cars to put in time
For the big men in Waikiki. The whole rite
Is to put food on the table, and this becomes
A repetition the way you leave me so.
The cold gets to my stranger’s bones,
Making me tarry to say this prayer
One more time in the corner altar of my day:
Do not leave me wind, breath
Air, breeze. Stay, stay longer and whisper
To me the definition of Honolulu morning
And the means to the ceremony of going
Through another celebration of the word
Coming onto a page, this one about
Our pains. Today, we launch yet another
Chance to hear our own voice. We say it louder,
Clearer this time. We need to hear what we say.
Like the daybreak, we see it coming,
And soon is the noontime segueing
Into the sacred hours of our exilic becoming.
Wayaway, eastwind, become our
Amian, our northwind, and fill our hearts
With a song no one wants to sing.
Call out to the Abagat, tell it to reside
In our drunken nights, and make us sober,
Alert to the lullabies of the Pangagdan,
So there, with the amber sun setting, we get
The fulfillment of a new rainbow’s dream
For which reason we gather again.
Hon, HI
Dec 5, 2011/ At the launching of 'Panagtaripato: Parenting Our Stories, Our Stories As Parents'
Wayaway, eastwind, giver of an element
That moves me. It is the crack of dawn
And this dream caught me so while you
Take things in stride, caress the plumeria
Leaf by my window, in this cold of winter.
By the Makakilo mountains, there
You are now and dancing to the tune
Of whizzing lives, on their cars to put in time
For the big men in Waikiki. The whole rite
Is to put food on the table, and this becomes
A repetition the way you leave me so.
The cold gets to my stranger’s bones,
Making me tarry to say this prayer
One more time in the corner altar of my day:
Do not leave me wind, breath
Air, breeze. Stay, stay longer and whisper
To me the definition of Honolulu morning
And the means to the ceremony of going
Through another celebration of the word
Coming onto a page, this one about
Our pains. Today, we launch yet another
Chance to hear our own voice. We say it louder,
Clearer this time. We need to hear what we say.
Like the daybreak, we see it coming,
And soon is the noontime segueing
Into the sacred hours of our exilic becoming.
Wayaway, eastwind, become our
Amian, our northwind, and fill our hearts
With a song no one wants to sing.
Call out to the Abagat, tell it to reside
In our drunken nights, and make us sober,
Alert to the lullabies of the Pangagdan,
So there, with the amber sun setting, we get
The fulfillment of a new rainbow’s dream
For which reason we gather again.
Hon, HI
Dec 5, 2011/ At the launching of 'Panagtaripato: Parenting Our Stories, Our Stories As Parents'
Selda Onse
MANILA, Philippines — The presidential suite of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) in Quezon City is ready for occupancy, hospital Medical Director Nona Legaspi said Friday. C. Yu. Radio Inquirer, Dec. 2, 2011
Agur-uray ti kuadrado nga espasio
Ti pawaywaymi kenka nga aldaw.
Basol man wenno saan ti nagan ti darikmat
A kadakam ket impaidam, itan ket
Bukodam dagiti uppat a suli dagiti balikas
A kadakam ket minemmem, rinabsut
Kadagiti bibig dagiti ubbing ti lamlammiong
Tapno kadagiti bilog ti tagainep
Ket ti arinebneb
A demokrasia ti mannanakaw.
Adu a kari.
Adu a pammatalged ti matay.
Adu a patibong ti aglusdoy
Tapno iti krimen kadagiti mannibrong nga isem
Ket ti sabidong a sagut ti mapaay.
Tinagikukuam amin a matagikua:
Tapok, tirania, dagiti arestado nga anges.
Kukuam amin a matagikua:
Lupot iti bagi nga ulbod, kas ti kararag
Kadagiti tumeng a nakasursuro
Nga agparintuod, ket iti ginget dagiti isusuko
Ket ti deklarasion a ti ili ket balud
Dagiti benditado nga am-amangaw
Dagiti obispo, padi, pulis, pulitiko
Ken ti kansion ti koro a mabayadan.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pammigatmi.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pangngaldawmi.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pangrabiimi.
Ta sika, kas idi punganay, sika ti pagapuan
Dagiti amin a tig-ab nga iti karabukob
Ket di met makalasat. Agbugsot dagitoy kas
Kadagiti amin a pammaidam
Kas kadagiti maudi a rayray ti mangrabrabii a bituen
A tinagikuam, impempen kadagiti baul
Tapno kadagiti sardam ti utangem a sipnget
Ket bilangbilangem kas pakaragsakam.
Idinto a dakami, iti sulinek dagiti tagainepmi
Ket ti namnama iti kakaisuna a makan nga itan
Ket sinandiam iti kararag, pammati, allilaw.
Kadagiti uppat a suli ti panawen, dita
A riknaem ti panagbisim, iti balikas
Kas iti diminto ited a wayawayam.
Kadagiti rabii ti panagmaymaysa,
Padasem ti makidanggay kadagiti agpuypuyat
A kanito tapno ti anghel a kasisigud
Ket dinaka inggaan, kas iti aliwit matallikudam
A masakbayan.
Dis 1, 2011
Hon, HI
Agur-uray ti kuadrado nga espasio
Ti pawaywaymi kenka nga aldaw.
Basol man wenno saan ti nagan ti darikmat
A kadakam ket impaidam, itan ket
Bukodam dagiti uppat a suli dagiti balikas
A kadakam ket minemmem, rinabsut
Kadagiti bibig dagiti ubbing ti lamlammiong
Tapno kadagiti bilog ti tagainep
Ket ti arinebneb
A demokrasia ti mannanakaw.
Adu a kari.
Adu a pammatalged ti matay.
Adu a patibong ti aglusdoy
Tapno iti krimen kadagiti mannibrong nga isem
Ket ti sabidong a sagut ti mapaay.
Tinagikukuam amin a matagikua:
Tapok, tirania, dagiti arestado nga anges.
Kukuam amin a matagikua:
Lupot iti bagi nga ulbod, kas ti kararag
Kadagiti tumeng a nakasursuro
Nga agparintuod, ket iti ginget dagiti isusuko
Ket ti deklarasion a ti ili ket balud
Dagiti benditado nga am-amangaw
Dagiti obispo, padi, pulis, pulitiko
Ken ti kansion ti koro a mabayadan.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pammigatmi.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pangngaldawmi.
Madagdagullit ti pammakawanmi kenka.
Ngem dimo pinakawan dagiti pangrabiimi.
Ta sika, kas idi punganay, sika ti pagapuan
Dagiti amin a tig-ab nga iti karabukob
Ket di met makalasat. Agbugsot dagitoy kas
Kadagiti amin a pammaidam
Kas kadagiti maudi a rayray ti mangrabrabii a bituen
A tinagikuam, impempen kadagiti baul
Tapno kadagiti sardam ti utangem a sipnget
Ket bilangbilangem kas pakaragsakam.
Idinto a dakami, iti sulinek dagiti tagainepmi
Ket ti namnama iti kakaisuna a makan nga itan
Ket sinandiam iti kararag, pammati, allilaw.
Kadagiti uppat a suli ti panawen, dita
A riknaem ti panagbisim, iti balikas
Kas iti diminto ited a wayawayam.
Kadagiti rabii ti panagmaymaysa,
Padasem ti makidanggay kadagiti agpuypuyat
A kanito tapno ti anghel a kasisigud
Ket dinaka inggaan, kas iti aliwit matallikudam
A masakbayan.
Dis 1, 2011
Hon, HI
Darepdep iti Sabong a Palusi
Ket bumaringkuas ti mannaniw iti di pay nakariing nga alas-tres tapno ikur-itna ti maipapan iti daniw ti palusi a sabong tapno iti panagikur-it ket mataginayon ti sao, nga iti isip, sadiay laeng a maimtuod.
Agawem daytoy iti mamarparbangon a tagainep.
Ta ita ita daytoy nga agmurmuray a bigat
Ket daytoy a balikas manipud kadagiti naruay
A pampanunoten: palusi, ti sabong a puraw
Nga immuna a naranaan iti istoria ti inabraw.
No kasano daytoy nga immapay iti panunot
Ket di matunton dagiti rugi ti silaba
Dagiti adu a buttuon, iti man panagbirbirok
Iti kaipapanan wenno iti pannakabirok
Iti kaikarian. Tawen kas kadagiti makaltaangan
A rabii ti panagbirbirok iti sabong a puraw
Ket segun iti tagainep ita, daytoy a sabong,
Sangadosena a naimula iti sisesegga a bengkag
Ti nagannak ti gayyem ket iti turod ti mannalon,
Sadiay nga agsampaga, kas iti kayanga,
Wenno ti nabanglo a kampupot.
Kasariping ti palusi ti tao, kas ti daga
A nakaitukitan. Ditoy ti rugi ti amin
Maipapan kadagiti posible, uray
Iti bigat a mariing ti rikna a manglagda
Iti agellay a pasdek ti binangon a derrep.
Segun iti darepdep, iti kampay-idi
Dagiti mabalin nga isayangkat,
Agtitimpuyog dagiti apostol ti palusi
Kas ti disipulo ti amin a banglo
Dagiti mairanud iti seremonia ti angot,
Kas iti pintas kas iti salamangka
Ti palusi a sabong, ket iti ritual
Ti surnad ket iti tutok ti bantay daytoy
A maaramid ti inauna a libot.
Sabong kas iti sabong, daytoy a palusi
Ti napukaw idi a taraon!
Waipahu, HI
Noviembre 23, 2011
Agawem daytoy iti mamarparbangon a tagainep.
Ta ita ita daytoy nga agmurmuray a bigat
Ket daytoy a balikas manipud kadagiti naruay
A pampanunoten: palusi, ti sabong a puraw
Nga immuna a naranaan iti istoria ti inabraw.
No kasano daytoy nga immapay iti panunot
Ket di matunton dagiti rugi ti silaba
Dagiti adu a buttuon, iti man panagbirbirok
Iti kaipapanan wenno iti pannakabirok
Iti kaikarian. Tawen kas kadagiti makaltaangan
A rabii ti panagbirbirok iti sabong a puraw
Ket segun iti tagainep ita, daytoy a sabong,
Sangadosena a naimula iti sisesegga a bengkag
Ti nagannak ti gayyem ket iti turod ti mannalon,
Sadiay nga agsampaga, kas iti kayanga,
Wenno ti nabanglo a kampupot.
Kasariping ti palusi ti tao, kas ti daga
A nakaitukitan. Ditoy ti rugi ti amin
Maipapan kadagiti posible, uray
Iti bigat a mariing ti rikna a manglagda
Iti agellay a pasdek ti binangon a derrep.
Segun iti darepdep, iti kampay-idi
Dagiti mabalin nga isayangkat,
Agtitimpuyog dagiti apostol ti palusi
Kas ti disipulo ti amin a banglo
Dagiti mairanud iti seremonia ti angot,
Kas iti pintas kas iti salamangka
Ti palusi a sabong, ket iti ritual
Ti surnad ket iti tutok ti bantay daytoy
A maaramid ti inauna a libot.
Sabong kas iti sabong, daytoy a palusi
Ti napukaw idi a taraon!
Waipahu, HI
Noviembre 23, 2011
Istasion ti Panagsagaba, 1
After more than an hour, the fighters decided they could get the other four captives off. They were helped out of the front door. Gaddafi remained where he was, on his own at the back, silent and aloof. “The Capture of Gaddafi’s son,” NYT, Nov 20, 2011.
Kas idi damo, kasta met iti udi.
Ita ket martir ti sao, wenno traidor.
Kasano nga iyebkas dagiti tawid a basol
Iti dara dagiti kabusor nga idi ket adipen
Dagiti amin a kalbario a ti walang
A tagainep ti ama ti akimpatanor?
Pammagusto kadi ti ulimek
Tapno dagiti amin a makita ita,
Dagiti palagip iti panagsagaba
Nga iti ili ket impanamnama,
Patiray-ok kadi dagitoy iti babawi
Nga insao koma idi un-unana?
Iti isip ket ti napukaw a trono
A balitok a tinenneb dagiti saning-i
Ti mapadso a burayok. Kasano
Nga irugi ti sabali a pakasaritaan
Kadagiti disierto? Iti panagam-amangaw,
Nakitam kadagiti dagiti Ilokano
Nga iti kada kalio ket ti buteng
Ti kada tribu iti ilim tapno
Ti kintayeg ti selula ti kinaasinno
Ket ti panagkumbawa iti ama
Nga agnanayon nga amo?
Agtalappuagaw kadi dagiti bukod
A tagainep tapno iti pananglaga
Iti pagilian iti sabali a ladingit
Ket ti ikakaasi nga umuna
A panagsangit?
Hon, HI
Nov 20/11
Kas idi damo, kasta met iti udi.
Ita ket martir ti sao, wenno traidor.
Kasano nga iyebkas dagiti tawid a basol
Iti dara dagiti kabusor nga idi ket adipen
Dagiti amin a kalbario a ti walang
A tagainep ti ama ti akimpatanor?
Pammagusto kadi ti ulimek
Tapno dagiti amin a makita ita,
Dagiti palagip iti panagsagaba
Nga iti ili ket impanamnama,
Patiray-ok kadi dagitoy iti babawi
Nga insao koma idi un-unana?
Iti isip ket ti napukaw a trono
A balitok a tinenneb dagiti saning-i
Ti mapadso a burayok. Kasano
Nga irugi ti sabali a pakasaritaan
Kadagiti disierto? Iti panagam-amangaw,
Nakitam kadagiti dagiti Ilokano
Nga iti kada kalio ket ti buteng
Ti kada tribu iti ilim tapno
Ti kintayeg ti selula ti kinaasinno
Ket ti panagkumbawa iti ama
Nga agnanayon nga amo?
Agtalappuagaw kadi dagiti bukod
A tagainep tapno iti pananglaga
Iti pagilian iti sabali a ladingit
Ket ti ikakaasi nga umuna
A panagsangit?
Hon, HI
Nov 20/11
An Exclusive Interview with the Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr.
Mahalo to a Consul General—
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
Observer
Nov 2011
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
Observer
Nov 2011
Series on Preserving Ilokano/Other Languages-Conclusion
PRESERVING ILOKANO AND OTHER LANGUAGES, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND CULTURAL DEMOCRACY
(Conclusion)
Aurelio S. Agcaoili, PhD
Nakem and its work could be understood as our own language of critique.
It is also our language of possibility.
Our work of Ilokano language and culture instruction at the University of Hawaii does the same thing.
The simple fact that Nakem Conferences came out of our desire to put in context the centennial celebration of the first 15 Ilokanos to work in the plantations of Hawaii already implicates the intrinsic connection between what we do at our university and at Nakem—and between what our Nakem partners in the Philippines, through the Nakem Conferences consortium and our Nakem Conferences International which is housed at our UH Ilokano Program.
This proves that there is this beautiful but delicate dance that we are doing in our respective organizations and academic institutions.
It is beautiful because we have come to a point where we can now speak who we are, not in the fullness of human speech yet because of constraints that are largely external and systematic.
These constraints are traceable to much ready are our educational bureaucracy such as the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education, and the TESDA in listening to what we have to say, things that have been kept deep in our hearts for so long a time because speech is not the best virtue of our educational system but acquiescence, silence, and acceptance without the benefit of critique and reason.
There is the delicate dance in our pursuit of the MLE goals, this we have to admit.
And the dance is delicate because we are walking on new ground even if we resist the old ground and insist on our freedom to walk on this new one.
Certainly, we are learning along the way, even as we try to respond to the challenges of the various MLE goals and its six areas of focused activity.
What we envision and what we want done at Nakem is the evolving of a new educational practice of “being more-so”, a practice that takes into fundamental account the language of the students and the language of teachers teaching these students.
We refuse here to look at language and its reality as something akin to a tool in learning, in education, and in understanding the world.
In our account of the new educational practice of being more-so, we look at language, like the hermeneutist Hans-George Gadamer, as that which mediates our understanding of the world, that which middles, that which is between us and the world.
Thus we can only come to an understanding of this world through language.
There is no other way.
The fact that this language must be always in the concrete, that it must be ours even if we accept that it is also beyond us, makes all the more relevant in understanding the place of MLE in our pursuit of education that emancipates, and that it emancipates because it grounds itself from the humanity of our students and our teachers, a humanity that is always life-long and thus demanding a life-long, continuing, ceaseless educational practice.
Now, we summon the poet Machado and we say: Indeed, there is no road.
But we make the road while walking. We have begun to walk hoping that the road appears.
FAO
Nov 2011
(Conclusion)
Aurelio S. Agcaoili, PhD
Nakem and its work could be understood as our own language of critique.
It is also our language of possibility.
Our work of Ilokano language and culture instruction at the University of Hawaii does the same thing.
The simple fact that Nakem Conferences came out of our desire to put in context the centennial celebration of the first 15 Ilokanos to work in the plantations of Hawaii already implicates the intrinsic connection between what we do at our university and at Nakem—and between what our Nakem partners in the Philippines, through the Nakem Conferences consortium and our Nakem Conferences International which is housed at our UH Ilokano Program.
This proves that there is this beautiful but delicate dance that we are doing in our respective organizations and academic institutions.
It is beautiful because we have come to a point where we can now speak who we are, not in the fullness of human speech yet because of constraints that are largely external and systematic.
These constraints are traceable to much ready are our educational bureaucracy such as the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education, and the TESDA in listening to what we have to say, things that have been kept deep in our hearts for so long a time because speech is not the best virtue of our educational system but acquiescence, silence, and acceptance without the benefit of critique and reason.
There is the delicate dance in our pursuit of the MLE goals, this we have to admit.
And the dance is delicate because we are walking on new ground even if we resist the old ground and insist on our freedom to walk on this new one.
Certainly, we are learning along the way, even as we try to respond to the challenges of the various MLE goals and its six areas of focused activity.
What we envision and what we want done at Nakem is the evolving of a new educational practice of “being more-so”, a practice that takes into fundamental account the language of the students and the language of teachers teaching these students.
We refuse here to look at language and its reality as something akin to a tool in learning, in education, and in understanding the world.
In our account of the new educational practice of being more-so, we look at language, like the hermeneutist Hans-George Gadamer, as that which mediates our understanding of the world, that which middles, that which is between us and the world.
Thus we can only come to an understanding of this world through language.
There is no other way.
The fact that this language must be always in the concrete, that it must be ours even if we accept that it is also beyond us, makes all the more relevant in understanding the place of MLE in our pursuit of education that emancipates, and that it emancipates because it grounds itself from the humanity of our students and our teachers, a humanity that is always life-long and thus demanding a life-long, continuing, ceaseless educational practice.
Now, we summon the poet Machado and we say: Indeed, there is no road.
But we make the road while walking. We have begun to walk hoping that the road appears.
FAO
Nov 2011
Observer Editorial, November 2011
Something to Thank For
On this day of Thanksgiving, we have many things to thank for despite the grim statistics of our lives.
Sixteen Americans are unemployed.
One of every five children is poor.
Many more are falling in the cracks of our uneven economic lives, with the number of those unable to access basic social services increasing each day.
There is a widespread discontent among Americans.
And in the streets of Manhattan that lead to the citadel of commerce and capital, the famed Wall Street, there is uproar on what has become of our iniquitous lives.
The main motive of the pilgrims, the pioneering peregrines of our immigrant lives in this country, is the search for a better life, one marked by quality, not mere quantity (read: the possession of even the most unnecessary).
It is a life marked by freedom and liberty.
It is a life marked by respect for life—one’s own and another’s.
It is a life marked by abundance, not by want, deprivation, dispossession.
On Thanksgiving Day, this is all what it means: a return to the basics of our life as a people in the United States of America.
United in our diversity, united in our struggles, and united in our need to reclaim the very essence of our collective life—our union despite the odds.
We have so much to thank for despite the challenges that we see each day.
We have so much to thank for despite the increasing number of the homeless on our streets in Hawaii.
We have so much to thank for despite the need to take stock of what else we need to do so that next year, our Thanksgiving Day will be a bit better, more joyous, more bountiful.
Like the peregrines of old, we need to come to the table again, and with a thankful heart, remember that there is much to give even as there is much to ask for.
_______________________
Hurrah to the Consul General
We join the Filipino American community in thanking the Honorable Consul General Leoncio Cardenas for his years of service as a foreign affairs officer in the name of the people of the Philippines.
His coming to Hawaii for the second time is his way of coming full circle with his passion and dedication for the homeland of the immigrant Filipinos of Hawaii.
Even as we bid him adieu, we will always remember the work that he has done for our communities, his engagement with our various civic organizations, and his abiding presence in the many things that matter to us.
We say, saludos, Apo Leoncio Cardenas! Agbiagka! Mabuhay ka! Long live!
FAO Editorial
Nov 2011
On this day of Thanksgiving, we have many things to thank for despite the grim statistics of our lives.
Sixteen Americans are unemployed.
One of every five children is poor.
Many more are falling in the cracks of our uneven economic lives, with the number of those unable to access basic social services increasing each day.
There is a widespread discontent among Americans.
And in the streets of Manhattan that lead to the citadel of commerce and capital, the famed Wall Street, there is uproar on what has become of our iniquitous lives.
The main motive of the pilgrims, the pioneering peregrines of our immigrant lives in this country, is the search for a better life, one marked by quality, not mere quantity (read: the possession of even the most unnecessary).
It is a life marked by freedom and liberty.
It is a life marked by respect for life—one’s own and another’s.
It is a life marked by abundance, not by want, deprivation, dispossession.
On Thanksgiving Day, this is all what it means: a return to the basics of our life as a people in the United States of America.
United in our diversity, united in our struggles, and united in our need to reclaim the very essence of our collective life—our union despite the odds.
We have so much to thank for despite the challenges that we see each day.
We have so much to thank for despite the increasing number of the homeless on our streets in Hawaii.
We have so much to thank for despite the need to take stock of what else we need to do so that next year, our Thanksgiving Day will be a bit better, more joyous, more bountiful.
Like the peregrines of old, we need to come to the table again, and with a thankful heart, remember that there is much to give even as there is much to ask for.
_______________________
Hurrah to the Consul General
We join the Filipino American community in thanking the Honorable Consul General Leoncio Cardenas for his years of service as a foreign affairs officer in the name of the people of the Philippines.
His coming to Hawaii for the second time is his way of coming full circle with his passion and dedication for the homeland of the immigrant Filipinos of Hawaii.
Even as we bid him adieu, we will always remember the work that he has done for our communities, his engagement with our various civic organizations, and his abiding presence in the many things that matter to us.
We say, saludos, Apo Leoncio Cardenas! Agbiagka! Mabuhay ka! Long live!
FAO Editorial
Nov 2011
An Exclusive Interview with The Hon. Leoncio Cardenas Jr
Mahalo to a Consul General—
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
FAO
Nov 2011
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
FAO
Nov 2011
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