A taste of venison

SABBATICAL NOTES. 14 MAY 2014. SATURDAY. 
A taste of venison. 

FATHER'S DAY--or is FATHERS' DAY?--is family time too. 

In this diasporic lives of ours, it is family regathering as well, and tonight, as a prelude to the real father's day on Sunday, the clan gathered. 

Except that today, it a feast of venison as well. 

This is one heck of a meat one has forgotten for years even if at some point,we had some of this in our earlier incarnation, when the Philippines was kinder, when the mountains were mountains, not those bald and eroded places that they are now.

I take a bite of this venison from Lanai, one of the Hawaiian islands, and it tastes good.

I take another bite, and it tastes better, and I remember the Philippines when our imagination for a just and fair country was for real, when our lives were simpler and when the deceptions of politicians had some kind of kindness in them.

I take another bite, and it tastes best, this piece of red and dark meat. When chewed slowly and allow the meat to stay longer in the mouth, its flavor comes off.

I masticate it more slowly and I savor the bits and pieces that play up in the tongue.

While doing this, I imagine the Philippines in those better times.

I now think of the question of language in the country and I hope that this question would become real, and that the response is one of plurality, diversity, justice, and democracy.

Here, in these islands of the occupied Hawaiian people, there is a return to what is just and fair.

Slowly, for sure.

But certainly, slowly it is coming back.

I wish the same for the question of linguistic justice in the Philippines, for the question of cultural democracy, and for the question of emancipatory education.

Ah, this venison that gives me all these thoughts.

HONOLULU/
On father's day