SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JAN 2014 N1

SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JAN 2014 N1

IT IS THE BEGINNING of the week, and we face squarely what grace and blessings are in store for us this week and the next, hoping that in the foreverness of our hope life will be kind to us. 

I pick up what work has to be done, writing here and there, and figuring out how to finish another dictionary project for the education of the Ilokano people. 

How on earth have I ended up fighting for the language of my father is something, with the roots of my father not exactly hundred percent Ilokano, but possibly some Kankanaey blood and some Sepoy blood thrown in.

My mother is not even Ilokano, in the narrow sense of that word, but Pangasinan, and some other foreign blood strewn in across the history of colonization and abuse of some frailes from her genealogy.

So now I realize: That to fight for something that is right and just and fair is grounded on a circuitous but true logic of the orient, this logic of interconnections and circles, this logic of beginnings and ends all coming in at the same time.

No: it is not a case of ethnic origin, but it is a case of something grander, nobler, truer.

I have picked up the fight for the Ilokano people because this is the right thing to do, and not because I am Ilokano.

I have picked up writing in the Tagalog language, not because I am Tagalog, but I thought I could express myself in the Tagalog language.

I have picked up writing in English not because I am English (I cannot even imagine I am, nor can I pass for one), but because there are things that I want to say that I can express in this language.

At day's-end, we speak of the mystical in language.

This is about our soul finding residence, finding an abode, finding a home.

WPH, HI/
27 Jan 2014