Poetika at Literatura

Agila at Tanglaw (Philippine Social Conservative Movement Hymn)

2022-11-06T03:13:00.003-08:00

Original Lyrics and Music by JM Benavidez Estoque

Philippine Social Conservative Movement (PSCM) Logo

CAPO: 3// Intro: G-C-G-C

G D C G

Akayin mo ako at bigyan ng pakpak

G D C D

nais kong liparin ang dating kanlungan

C D C D

may bukang liwayway ng pag-asa't galak

G D C G

Mundo ngayo'y likha ng panglaw ng gabi

G D C D

at ng mga matang sa luha'y nagbatis

C D

Nawa'y maging tanglaw

C D

Puso ko'y iyong ilaw

C D

Sintang Bayan

III

G D C D

O Pilipinas! Bayan kong sinilangan

C D

Kami'y iyong tanggulan

C D

Kaibigang maaasahan

G D C D

Papawiin natin itong kadiliman

C D

Diyos naming gabay

C D

Magsilbi nawang patnubay

G D C G

Akayin mo ako at bigyan ng pakpak

G D C D

Ating nang liliparin isang bagong Pilipinas

C D C D

naglaho na'ng dilim, kapit-bisig haharapin

C D

bagong umaga!

Flows of the Desert

2022-03-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

by J.M. Benavidez Estoque

"Flows of the Desert" by Poetic Visions

A life full of sunshine only makes a desert.

Sometimes we need rains—

in the form of sadness, grief, and pain

To water down and cultivate our character

We need both

in order for us to grow

It is not about how we gain

But about how we play the game

Life is a perpetual flow

of highs and lows

Experience life. Both sunshine and rain.

Decalogue of the Duties of the Son of the People

2021-11-29T18:54:00.004-08:00

by Andres Bonifacio

Love God full-heartedly

II.

Bear always in mind that the true love o.f God is love of country, love which is also true love of man

III.

Bear always in mind that the true measure of honor and of charity is to die in defense of your country

IV.

Serenity, constancy, reason and faith in whatever act of endeavour, crown with success every desire

Guard as you would your honor, the mandates and aim of K.K.K.

VI.

It is incumbent to all that he who runs a serious risk in complying with his duties should be protected at the sacrifice of life and riches

VII.

Let the achievement of each either in self-control or incompliance with duty, be an example to his fellow

VIII.

Help to the limit of your endurance, share with the needy and unfortunate

IX.

Diligence in your daily work to earn a living is the true expression of love and affection for yourself, for your wife, for your child, for your brother and for your countryman

Believe in the chastisement of the perverse and the treacherous and the reward of all good work. Believe, also, that the aims of the K.K.K. are the gifts of God; for the hopes of the country are also the hopes of God

Battle Island (The Legend of Apo lsland)

2021-07-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

by: Maria Elena Paterno

"Dalampasigan" (2020) by Abelardo Maceda

Apo Island is a small island in the Mindanao Sea near Negros Occidental province. It is a beautiful island surrounded by waters teeming with fish and other marine life but it is also dangerous. Jagged rocks and swift, deadly ocean currents make it difficult for boats, to land on Apo Island.

But once upon a time there was no island in this part of the Mindanao Sea. People there tell a strange story of how the island came to be.

On the southeastern tip of Negros Occidental there once was a rich village ruled by a brave chief named Apo Daulin. Apo Daulin and his people had come from the southern island of Mindanao. They had braved the waves and the open sea to settle here and build a new life for themselves.

Apo Daulin's village was peaceful. There were plenty of beasts in the forest to hunt and plenty of fish in the sea to catch. The villagers were happy and content. And although the chief had guards to watch out for invaders, many of the villagers had set down their weapons for fishing nets of tools for farming. They did not expect enemies in their new homes.

They were wrong.

One still night, when the moon was only half full, a small fleet of boats slid silently into the cove. The invaders were ruthless pirates! A guard called out a warning, but it was too late. The pirates were landing on the shore! Their boats were called vintas, and from the pattern on the sails, it was easy to tell that they were from the southern island of Sulu.

The pirates descended on the village with bloodcurdling cries. Their sharp weapons glinted in the moonlight. The villagers scrambled for their weapons, but many were rusty from lack of use. Men and women fought bravely against the invaders, but no matter how hard they fought, they could not hope to win.

The battle lasted until dawn. Many of the villagers were wounded. They could no longer stop the pirates from looting their houses. The women tried to defend themselves with their kitchen knives. But they were tied up, gagged, and brought to the boats.

The villagers were angry, of course, and Apo Daulin was the angriest of all. "To the boats!" he shouted. "We must catch the pirates!"

But the villagers' fishing boats were no match for the swift and steady vintas of the pirates. Apo Daulin and his men pursued the vintas to deep water, but it seemed that they had little hope of ever catching up with them.

Suddenly the vintas' sails loomed larger and larger. Were the villagers finally gaining on them? Then Apo Daulin's men realized what had happened. The vicious pirates had turned their boats around. They wanted a sea battle!

Apo Daulin and his men were ready. Brown hands tightened their grips on their newly sharpened spears. The villagers waited for the onslaught. The enemies' swift vintas rammed the small fishing craft and the water churned white.

The villagers fought bravely. Many warriors were wounded in the battle. Some were thrown into the sea and drowned. It was a long hard fight, but in the end the curved blades of the pirates won over the hunting spears of the village warriors. The ocean turned red with blood.

The battle was over.

Apo Daulin and his brave men were dead.

Seeing this, the captured women in the vintas let out a loud wail. They prayed that they might join their loved ones in heaven rather than suffer at the hands of the pirates.

Their prayers were answered, because when the pirates put up their sails again, a huge storm arose. The vintas were tossed about like feathers in the angry waters. The pirates were good sailors, but no skill could battle nature's fury. The whole fleet sank.

The storm raged through the night. The next morning, the other villagers, those who had been wounded in the first battle, came out of their huts to see what was left of their village. A child saw it first. With a loud cry he pointed to what seemed like a huge rock in the sea. It was near the spot where the second battle took place.

"It looks like Apo Daulin," said the child in Wonder. He came out of the water to guard our village!"

"Yes, that must be our Apo," said the child's grandmother, who had come out of their hut when she heard his cry. "It is Apo Daulin, risen from the sea to shield our village from further attacks."

Some of the people got into their bancas and paddled to the rock, As they came nearer, they thought they could see Apo Daulin himself sitting on top of the island. The wind seemed to carry the voices of their friends who had died in battle.

Even today many mysterious accidents happen around Apo Island. Small boats are dragged down by the deadly currents. And some divers disappear, never to be seen again. It is said that the angry spirit of Apo Daulin is still there, watching over his beloved people.

The Shoes of Chadliwan

2021-07-20T07:34:00.001-07:00

by: Consorcio Solito Borje

"Igorot" (1917) by Fernando Amorsolo

One morning, when the frost lay thick upon the camote fields and the smoke from the cogon huts hung like a prayer in the freezing air, the Igorot village of Ampiw-ek awoke to find that one of its wandering sons had returned to the mother fold at last. It was Chadliwan, home from the copper fields of Mankayan. And all Ampiw-ek turned out to partake of the black-footed pig that was slaughtered as an offering to the good anitos who saw Chadliwan safe home; and the people spoke to him with a new note of respect in their voices.

This was surprising, for Chadliwan's figure was not one to inspire deference. There was hardly anything remarkable about him. He was short, massive, broad, and had a very low forehead. A navy-blue woolen coat with epaulets and brass buttons lent him a martial air, and he wore pants, it was true; but in Ampiw-ek, coats and pants were no new things.

It was soon evident, however, that the village's new respect for Chadliwan was due to the mighty brogans that adorned his big, veiny feet. Shoes are shoes; but shoes, bold and heavy as Chadliwan's, had never been seen before in Ampiw-ek. And, in the estimate of the villagers, Chadliwan's shoes and, perforce, Chadliwan himself, breathed all the romance of the far-off Mankayan mines.

During the feast, Chadliwan danced the lovers' dance with Djarma, fairest of the dusky flowers of Ampiw-ek. It was a fiery and colorful dance, with Djarma blushing in the unveiled ardor of Chadliwan's gaze. But under the vibrant, throbbing notes of the gangsas, there ran a subtle current of hate and rivalry; for Djarma was beloved of Twaddig.

So it was that when the feasting was over, Twaddig told Djarma to discourage Chadliwan's attentions. But Djarma flushed with anger and asked Twaddig who he thought he was to tell her what to do. At once, Twaddig's shoulders drooped, and such depth of sadness filled his eyes that Djarma was moved to pity him. Yet she said, "If you want me, you must fight for me." But whether she knew it or not, Twaddig could never give Chadliwan battle with the head-ax. The council of old men who sat in the abong-abong and guided the destinies of Ampiwek frowned upon the bloody strife between members of the village. So, Twaddig summoned his friends to a council of war to seek their advice. If Chadliwan could not be eliminated by means of the battle-ax, his designs must be frustrated in some other manner.

In a secluded ravine, before the object of the rendezvous was broached, the council drank much wine from Twaddig's jar and danced to the weird, compelling music from his salibao. But the rice wine was strong and the music became lulling. One by one, the council finally sank into unconsciousness. That was as far as the council going. In the days that followed, Twaddig's world went black. Daily he saw Chadliwan make enormous strides in Djarma's favor. Twaddig was fast losing her--Djarma, she whose cheeks were of the color of spurting dag blood. To him no longer sang the pew-pew-ek of early mornings, to him the wild mountain streams no longer raced to the mad pounding of his heart.

Yet Twaddig did not lose hope. The heaviness in his heart had decreased somewhat as he lay in his hut one night to let his mind dwell on his problem. What was it that Djarma found so attractive in Chadliwan? Chadliwan was not handsome. He was not tall. He was not so strong as Twaddig. If he was so lacking in natural attractions, what was it that lent him fascination? Could it be his shoes? Of course, it must be those shoes of his! Why had he not thought of it before? Twaddig half raised himself from his bed as the truth dawned upon him. He sat up.

In the darkness, his expression suddenly assumed its usual craftiness. Then, a smile crept on his face. He fell back on his bed, and sleep, more peaceful than he had in days, came to him.

The morning came and Twaddig was jubilant. What was his plan? He would fill Chadliwan with wine and then contrive to make his rival lose his shoes in the game of bangking. Twaddig felt sure of winning.

Drunken men don't play bangking well, and they don't see well. A twirl of the coins, a peep under the coconut shell, a correct "guess," and the shoes would be his. Then, he would put them on and win back Djarma. For what could Chadliwan be without his shoes? Djarma would then see him as he really was - an ugly, stupid nobody.

So, that morning, Twaddig sought Chadliwan and invited his rival to drink wine with him at his house. Chadliwan, thirsty and unsuspecting, readily accepted the invitation. They hurdled a low fence that surrounded a yard paved with speckled blue river-stones, climbed a crude ladder of unbarked saplings, then crawled through a broad low door. into the dark interior of a windowless one-room cogon hut that rested on stilt-like posts. The roof, the rafters, the walls were festooned with soot. In a corner of the room lay odds and ends which had evidently been swept there to clear the floor.

Having produced a pair of bowls, Twaddig squatted on the floor of yellow saplings secured together with vine. He invited Chadliwan to do the same. Then Twaddig brought to light a jar from a mound of leaves in a corner and pushed it to the side of Chadliwan. In the dim cold sunlight that filtered through holes in the walls of the house, the green-white jar gleamed with a pale splendor, and the dragons that gamboled on studded surface writhed painfully and spat envenomed fire "This is my jar," boasted Twaddig unnecessarily as he squatted before Chadliwan. "Mine," he repeated in a tone calculated to excite the other's envy. "You know what these heirlooms are? Kept for hundreds of years. My jar," he continued, uncovering its mouth-"it changes color with the years."

Chadliwan grunted. They dipped their bowls into the jar and began drinking.

"I wouldn't sell it for twenty carabaos," Twaddig went on with a loutish.

"It is an heirloom." They went on drinking. With the third bowl, Chadliwan stretched his legs before him and rested his heavy-lidded eyes on his brogans.

"My shoes," said Chadliwan thickly, "my shoes" He broke off and held out his bowl for more wine.

"Your shoes?" prompted Twaddig, filling the other's bowl again.

Chadliwan raised his bowl but halted its way to his lips. "They are worth forty carabaos," he said, nodding defiantly at the other.

Twaddig snorted derisively. He laughed. Chadliwan regarded him quizzically.

"Forty carabaos?" Twaddig echoed, and he laughed again. He cast a depreciatory eye on the brogans.

Chadliwan exploded an English word he had learned at the mines.

"I said my shoes are worth forty carabaos, and they are!"

"Ho!" said Twaddig; and he plied Chadliwan with more wine. He let Chadliwan drink for some time before he said, "You lie." This was one-half of an insult, but Chadliwan only smirked and dived deeper into his cups.

At once, Twaddig became animated with an eloquence whose fire gleamed even through his red eyes. "You are a liar, Chadliwan. You lie about everything. Your family are all liars. Your grandfather was a worse liar than your father. And you are worse than your grandfather"

Now this was an insult. Chadliwan put down his bowl of wine and looked at Twaddig with a sleepy fixedness. He exploded with equal fire.

"You are the liar."

Unheeding Chadliwan's retort, Twaddig brought out a smooth board, a shallow coconut-shell bowl, and two coins which had been filled until they were practically no more than two plain discs of copper, each with a crosscut on one side. Twaddig polished the coins vigorously on the board while Chadliwan looked on with dull, heavy, uncomprehending eyes.

"My Chinese jar against your shoes to prove that your grandfather was a big liar" challenged Twaddig, holding out the two shining discs of copper in his brown palms.

Chadliwan took off his shoes and pushed them beside the jar. He spat violently on his hands and rubbed them together. The day was still young. The pew-pew-ek called to each other outside the palings, and far away the great Chico River could be heard booming down its chasms. The gold of the sunlight sprayed a little square at the door, and through the crevices of the floor, Twaddig's family pig could be seen perambulating, grunting to itself contentedly. The game was on.

The day wore on. In Twaddig's house, twirling coins clinked under a shallow coconut-shell bowl on a smooth board; and now and then the clinking was drowned by the grunts of contending men. And when Chadliwan, woe-begone and barefooted, crept out of the house, he left behind him a happy warrior dancing the dance of victory.

For what was Chadliwan without shoes? Nothing.

For the first time in his life, Twaddig had shoes to wear. But if Chadliwan's feet were big, Twaddig's were enormous. Still, by unremitting labor, he succeeded in forcing his feet into the brogans. They pinched horridly as he stood in the middle of the floor, and he wondered how Chadliwan ever made himself feel at home in them. He took a step, then another. Slowly around the room he walked. His feet eased somewhat into his shoes. That was better.

Twaddig toiled down the crude ladder of his house and stood in the yard. The sun had sunk, and darkness was falling rapidly. A slow breeze caught him in the face with the cold breath of the pines. He must go at once to the ulog—the girls' community house—to regain "lost territory." But when he straddled the fence, it was the beginning of the end.

After the first hundred steps, broken glass seemed to rub the bony structure at the back of his heels. Yet he continued his way. During the second hundred steps, his little toes began to feel like boils. The third hundred; Twaddig's big frame began to tremble. Now each foot was one large boil threatening to burst but could not for lack of room in the shoe. His feet, it seemed to him, filled the entire width of the path, and were each moment deploying farther over the grass until they spread over the whole countryside. With a very heavy head, Chadliwan awoke from his besotted sleep. Somebody was climbing up the ladder of his house painfully. He raised his head from the floor. It was Twaddig, holding a pair of thick, heavy brogans in his hands. His feet were black and swollen. Bent and writhing at every step, Twaddig limped to Chadliwan's side. "Chadliwan, whose father is my father's friend, who is my friend," entreated Twaddig pitifully.

"What do you want?" the other demanded gruffly. Twaddig held out the pair of shoes.

"Please take back your shoes." Chadliwan grabbed his shoes from Twaddig's hands and examined them critically.

"Why, you cut the strings!" he shrieked.

"I couldn't untie them."

"Who can if they are tied this way?" Chadliwan fingered the awkward knots Twaddig had made.

"But you can replace them with young vine, can't you?"

"Maybe yes," said Chadliwan grudgingly. And he proceeded at once to put on his shoes.

Two moons later, the nuptial feasts for Chadliwan and Djarma were celebrated. Chadliwan danced mightily in his brogans to the earnest salibao music that Twaddig played.

My Father's Tragedy

2021-07-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

by: Carlos Bulosan

"Sabongero" by Andrew Fernandez

It was one of those lean years of our lives. Our rice field was destroyed by locusts that came from the neighboring towns. When the locusts were gone, we planted string beans but a fire burned the whole plantation. My brothers went away because they got tired of working for nothing. Mother and my sisters went from house to house, asking for something to do, but every family was plagued with some kind of disaster.

The children walked in the streets looking for the fruit that fell to the ground from the acacia tree. The men hung on the fence around the market and watched the meat dealers hungrily. We were all suffering from a lack of proper food. But the professional gamblers had money. They sat in the fish house at the station and gave their orders aloud.

The loafers and other bystanders watched them eat boiled rice and fried fish with silver spoons. They never used forks because the prongs stuck between their teeth. They always cut their lips and tongues with the knives, so they never asked for them. If the waiter was new and he put the knives on the table, they looked at each other furtively and slipped them into their pockets. They washed their hands in one big wooden bowl of water and wiped their mouths with the leaves of the arbor trees that fell on the ground.

The rainy season was approaching. There were rumors of famine. The grass did not grow and our carabao became thin. Father's fighting cock, Burick, was practically the only healthy thing in our household. Its father, Kanaway, had won a house for us some three years before, and Father had commanded me to give it the choicest rice. He took the soft-boiled eggs from the plate of my sister Marcela, who was sick with meningitis that year. He was preparing Burick for something big, but a great catastrophe came to our town. The peasants and most of the rich men spent their money on food. They had stopped going to the cockpit for fear of temptation; if they went at all, they just sat in the gallery and shouted at the top of their lungs. They went home with their heads down, thinking of the money they would have won.

It was during this impasse that Father sat every day in our backyard with his fighting cock. He would not go anywhere. He would not do anything. He just sat there caressing Burick and exercising his legs. He spat at his hackles and rubbed them, looking far away with a big dream. When Mother came home with some food, he went to the granary and sat there till evening. Sometimes, he slept there with Burick, but at dawn the cock woke him up with its majestic crowing. He crept into the house and fumbled for the cold rice in the pot under the stove. Then, he put the cock in the pen and slept on the bench all day.

Mother was very patient. But the day came when she kicked him off the bench. He fell on the floor face down, looked up at her, and then resumed his sleep. Mother took my sister Francisca with her. They went from house to house in the neighborhood, pounding rice for some people and hauling drinking water for others. They came home with their share in a big basket that Mother carried on her head.

Father was still sleeping on the bench when they arrived. Mother told my sister to cook some of the rice. She dipped a cup in the jar and splashed the cold water on Father's face. He jumped up, looked at Mother with anger, and went to Burick's pen. He gathered the cock in his arms and went down the porch. He sat on a log in the backyard and started caressing his fighting cock.

Mother went on with her washing. Francisca fed Marcela some boiled rice. Father was still caressing Burick. Mother was mad at him.

"Is that all you can do?" she shouted at him.

"Why do you say that to me?" Father said, "I'm thinking of some ways to become rich."

Mother threw a piece of wood at the cock. Father saw her in time.

He ducked and covered the cock with his body. The wood struck him. It cut a hole at the base of his head. He got up and examined Burick. He acted as though the cock were the one that was hurt. He looked up at Mother and his face was pitiful.

"Why don't you see what you are doing?" he said, hugging Burick.

"I would like to bring that cock's neck," mother said.

"That's his fortune," I said.

Mother looked sharply at me. "Shut up, idiot!" she said. "You are becoming more like your father every day."

I watched her eyes move foolishly. I thought she would cry. She tucked her skirt between her legs and went on with her work. I ran down the ladder and went to the granary, where Father was treating the wound on his head. I held the cock for him.

"Take good care of it, son," he said.

"Yes, Sir," I said.

"Go to the river and exercise its legs. Come back right away. We are going to town."

I ran down the street with the cock, avoiding the pigs and dogs that came in my way. I plunged into the water in my clothes and swam with Burick. I put some water in my mouth and blew it into his face. I ran back to our house slapping the water off my clothes. Father and I went to the cockpit.

It was Sunday, but there were many loafers and gamblers at the place. There were peasants and teachers. There was a strange man who had a black fighting cock. He had come from one of the neighboring towns to seek his fortune in our cockpit.

His name was Burcio. He held our cock above his head and closed one eye, looking sharply at Burick's eyes. He put it on the ground and bent over it, pressing down the cock's back with his hands. Burcio was testing Burick's strength. The loafers and gamblers formed a ring around them, watching Burcio's deft hands expertly moving around Burick.

Father also tested the cock of Burcio. He threw it in the air and watched it glide smoothly to the ground. He sparred with it. The black cock pecked at his legs and stopped to crow proudly for the bystanders. Father picked it up and spread its wings, feeling the tough hide beneath the feathers.

The bystanders knew that a fight was about to be matched. They counted the money in their pockets without showing it to their neighbors. They felt the edges of the coins with amazing swiftness and accuracy.

Only a highly magnified amplifier could have recorded the tiny clink of the coins that fell between deft fingers. The caressing rustle of the paper money was inaudible. The peasants broke from the ring and hid behind the coconut trees. They unfolded their handkerchiefs and counted their money. They rolled the paper money in their hands and returned to the crowd. They waited for the final decision.

"Shall we make it this coming Sunday?" Burcio asked.

"It's too soon for my Burick," Father said. His hand moved mechanically into his pocket. But it was empty. He looked around at his cronies.

But two of the peasants caught Father's arm and whispered something to him. They slipped some money in his hand and pushed him toward Burcio. He tried to estimate the amount of money in his hand by balling it hard. It was one of his many tricks with money. He knew right away that he had some twenty-peso bills. A light of hope appeared on his face.

"This coming Sunday's all right," he said.

All at once, the men broke into wild confusion. Some went to Burcio with their money; others went to Father. They were not bettors, but investors. Their money would back up the cocks at the cockpit.

In the late afternoon, the fight was arranged. We returned to our house with some hope. Father put Burick in the pen and told me to go to the fish ponds across the river. I ran down the road with joy. I found a fish pond under a camachili tree. It was the favorite haunt of snails and shrimps. Then I went home.

Mother was cooking something good. I smelled it the moment entered the gate. I rushed into the house and spilled some of the snails on the floor. Mother was at the stove. She was stirring the ladle in the boiling pot. Father was still sleeping on the bench. Francisca was feeding Marcela hot soup. I put the snails and shrimp in a pot and sat on the bench.

Mother was cooking chicken with some bitter melons. I sat wondering where she got it. I knew that our poultry house in the village was empty. We had no poultry in town. Father opened his eyes when he heard the bubbling pot.

Mother put the rice on a big wooden platter and set it on the table. She filled our plates with chicken meat and ginger. Father got up suddenly and went to the table. Francisca sat by the stove. Father was reaching for the white meat in the platter when Mother slapped his hand away. She was saying grace. Then we put our legs under the table and started eating.

It was our first taste of chicken in a long time. Father filled his plate twice and ate very little rice. He usually ate more rice when we had only salted fish and some leaves of trees. We ate "grass" most of the time. Father tilted his plate and took the soup noisily, as though he were drinking wine. He put the empty plate near the pot and asked for some chicken meat.

"It is good chicken," he said.

Mother was very quiet. She put the breast on a plate and told Francisca to give it to Marcela. She gave me some bitter melons. Father put his hand in the pot and fished out a drumstick.

"Where did you get this lovely chicken?" he asked.

"Where do you think I got it?" Mother said.

The drumstick fell from his mouth. It rolled into the space between the bamboo splits and fell on the ground. Our dog snapped it up and ran away. Father's face broke in great agony. He rushed outside the house. I could hear him running toward the highway. My sister continued eating but my appetite was gone.

"What are you doing, Son?" Mother said. "Eat your chicken.”

Growing Up Different

2021-07-19T01:17:00.000-07:00

by: "Kit"

"Hidden Message 1P57" (2021) by Clark Aldwin Balaclaot

I was raised in what some people would call an unconventional environment. I felt alienated from the world around me. I had a "secret" that had to be kept, and I felt abnormal.

My parents were with the "progressive" sector of society, and during the Marcos years, that was something you did not talk about openly. There was an unspoken rule that we should not tell our friends, neighbors or anyone in the community because that could lead to trouble.

When friends asked me where my parents were, since they were often absent from PTA meetings and other parent-child activities, I would just tell them that they were away on a business trip.

I didn't like to tell lies. I wanted to be like my classmates with "normal" parents, living under "normal" circumstances. I felt different.

My first glimpse of the world included barbed wires because my father was detained when I was barely seven months old. The first songs I learned to sing were protest songs that were banned by the government. I didn't see too many movies; I used to tag along when my aunts went to plays and concerts organized by the local nongovernment organizations. I did not have Barbie dolls like my classmates because my parents said Matell oppressed their workers. Being young and exposed to a materialistic world, I resented being deprived of such luxuries.

When I graduated from elementary school, my father decided that I would transfer to a public high school. I sulked because I was the only one from my group of friends who would make the move. But my father insisted, saying I needed exposure to different kinds of people.

In my first year, was not admitted to the special section because I enrolled late. I had classmates who dropped out during the first month of class because their family did not have enough money to sustain their education. Tuition was free, but there were still other fees that needed to be paid. Anyway, they were thankful that they were able to finish their elementary schooling. Now they needed to work to augment the family income.

Classrooms in a public school can be hard to find. There were times when we had to hold classes under a mango tree. The schoolrooms that were available were dilapidated and the lighting was poor. The buildings were far apart, and we had to walk under the sweltering heat of the sun between classes. Once a month, usually on Fridays, we had to cut the grass in the school oval. I cannot bring myself to describe the state of the toilets in our school.

I was able to adjust, but then I just had to adapt to my new school, I guess. It was an entirely different environment for me, and I felt like a prisoner to the cause that my parents were fighting for.

Don't get me wrong I support them, and I am truly proud of what they do. That's why I want to be honest with myself and with the world. I want to discuss issues of national concern with my friends. I want to share with them the songs I know, not necessarily the hit songs on the airwaves but the songs that have substance.

There is an interesting red book that I want to read with my friends. Maybe I would understand it much better if I would share it with them. But then again, it may be too much for them.

When I was a senior in high school, my father again decided my future for me. I was going to study at the University of the Philippines, he said. If I did not pass the UP-college admission test, then I would have to enroll in some obscure college.

I was horrified by the thought. The only examination I took was the UPCAT. It was sink or swim, as far as I was concerned. If I didn't pass, then I would have one semester to suffer the consequences. Luckily I passed the test. I never expected to make it. I had very little confidence in myself because I felt different from other students I knew.

My father wanted me to study in Diliman like he aids, but I qualified for UP Los Baños. He told me I should work hard so I could transfer to Diliman in the next school year. (My father is like that: he tells you what he wants, and you can argue, but he still has the last word.)

He accompanied me to Los Baños once and that was that. He made me enroll by myself. He told me to take the bus from Quezon City to Los Baños to attend the block encounter.

I lived with a family I knew only vaguely. This was the first time that I was away from home, and I had a difficult time adjusting. I think I "grew up" in a week's time. I had to, or I would have been overwhelmed by the enormous change in my life.

In my freshman history class, I was assigned to discuss martial law. That was the first time I was able to talk openly about my background and the orientation of my family. I felt that my classmates would understand what martial law was all about if I related my own experience. I had so much to say, I needed more than a day's session to finish. When I was done, I felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt exhilarated, and I felt truly accepted for what I am. UP after all is a marketplace of ideas.

I never got to transfer to Diliman, and I shifted to a course I truly liked. which was not what my father wanted for me. This time, he could not do anything after I had made up my mind. I wanted to study the society in which I lived. I suppose this did not come as a surprise to him. I grew up in their mold.

Is this the end of my story? Life is a never-ending struggle to define oneself. There will be other obstacles to hurdle and goals to struggle for.

In retrospect, I feel lucky that I did not have a "normal" childhood, that I grew up "different" from most other children my age. At a young age, I learned that we should at all times look out for the greater good, for justice, for equality, for freedom. The worst thing that could have happened to me was if I grew up indifferent.

We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers

2021-07-19T01:15:00.001-07:00

by: Alejandro R. Roces

"Lambanog" (2020) by Fatima Frias

We Filipinos are mild drinkers. We drink only for three good reasons. We drink when we are very sad. We drink when we are very happy. And we drink for any other reason.

In 1945,the liberation forces landed in the Philippines. We Filipinos were very glad to see the Americans back, not so much because they were Americans but because they were not Japanese. In our barrio, alcoholized Americans became a common sight. A favorite story in the barrio then was that of the Yank soldier who stumbled with a bottle of whisky in his pocket. According to the story, the first thing the G.I. did was to feel his pocket. Finding it wet, he alarmingly looked at his hands; then, with a sigh of relief, he exclaimed:

“Thank God, it is blood! I thought it was my whisky!"

My first acquaintance with groggy GIs began one late afternoon. I was plowing our rice field with our carabao named Carpio. Disabled tanks and shot-down planes still cluttered the fields. I was barefooted and stripped to the waist. My hempen trousers were rolled up to my knees. My bolo was at my side.

An American soldier was walking on the highway. When he saw me, he headed toward me. I stopped plowing and waited for him. I noticed he was carrying a half-pint bottle of whisky. Whisky bottles seemed part of the American uniform.

"Hello, Joe." I said.

"Any bars in this town?" he asked.

That was usually the first question American soldiers asked when they visited our barrio.

"I am sorry, Joe," I replied. "There are no bars in this barrio."

"Oh, well! You know where I could buy more whisky?"

"No, Joe, I am sorry. We do not drink whisky."

Here, have a swig. You have been working too hard," he said, offering me his half-filled bottle.

"NO. thank you, Joe," I said. "We Filipinos are mild drinkers."

"Well, don't you drink at all?"

"Yes, Joe, I drink but not whisky."

"What the hell do you drink?"

"I drink lambanog."

"Jungle juice, eh?"

"I guess that is what the GIs call it."

You know where I could buy some?"

"I have some you can have, but I do not think you will like it."

“I’ll like it. Don't worry about that. I have drunk everything-whisky, rum, Brandy, tequilla, gin, champagne, saki, vodka."

He mentioned ma more that I cannot spell.

Say, you sure ask a lot, don't you?"

"I not only drink, Drink anything. I drank Channel no. 5 when I was in France. In New Guinea, I got soused on William's Shaving Lotion. When I was laid up in a hospital I got pie-eyed with medical alcohol. On my way re in a transport I got soused on torpedo juice: You ain't kidding when you say you drink a lot. So let's have some of that jungle juice, eh?"

I unhitched Carpio from the plow and massaged the back of his neck.

"You sure love that animal, don't you?" Joe remarked.

"I should," I said. t does half of my work."

"Why don't you get two of them."

I made no answer.

After kneading the neck of the bull, I led him to the mudhole. Joe followed me. The beast lay in the mud and was going: "Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Flies and other insects flew from its back and hovered in the air. A warm miasmic smell rose from the mire. When the first American troops invaded the Philippines in 1898, carabaos used to chase the Yankee soldiers off the fields. Now even the lowly water buffalo recognizes the American as a friend.

I scooped the turbid water and splashed it on his back. He rolled over and was soon covered with slime. An expression of perfect contentment came into his eyes. Then he swished his tail and Joe and [ had to move back to keep from getting spattered.

Presently I turned to Joe and said:

"Let us go."

We then left Carpio in the plash and proceeded toward my house. Joe was curiously looking around.

"This place is full of coconut palms," he said.

“Don't you have coconut trees in America?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "Back in God's country we have the pine tree."

"What is it like?"

"Oh, it is tall and stately. It goes straight up to the sky like a skyscraper. It symbolizes the States.

"Well," I said, "the coconut tree represents the Philippines. It stands up to the sky, but then its leaves sway down to earth as if remembering the land that gave it life."

In a short while we arrived at my nipa hut. I took a bamboo ladder and leaned it against a spiny tree. Then I climbed the ladder and picked some kalamansi.

"What's that?" Joe asked.

“Philippine lemon," I answered. "We will need this for our drinks."

“Oh, chasers."

“That is it, Joe. That is what the soldiers call it."

I filled my pockets with kalamansi and then went down. I went to the garden well and washed the mud from my legs. Then we climbed up into my hut. The rubescent sun was fast sinking against a roseate sky. Dusk came with the setting of the sun. So I filled a coconut shell with oil, dipped a Tamsin wick in the fluid, then lighted the wick. It produced a wavering. dull yellow light. I unstrapped my bolo and hung it on the wall.

“Please sit down, Joe." I said.

“Where? Joe asked looking around.

“Right there," I said, pointing to the floor.

Joe sat down on the floor. I sliced the kalamansi in halves, took some rough salt, and laid it on the foot-high table. Then I took my bottle of lambanog from the kitchen and handed it to Joe. Joe removed the stopper from the bottle, sniffed the contents, and then said:

"It smells O.K. What is the stuff made of?

“That is from the coco palm, Joe," I said.

"Oh, is this coconut juice?"

"No, Joe, that drink is not from the fruit. That is tapped from the tree itself."

“I see," Joe said.

Lambanog is a potation procured from the coconut bud, with pulverized mangrove bark thrown in to forfend spontaneous combustion. It has many uses. We use it as a remedy for snake bites, as a counteractive for malarial chills, as an insecticide, and for tanning carabao hide. If you imbibe enough of it, your senses amalgamate and you get to hear three-dimensional rondalla music in color.

“Would you like some water to mix with your drink?" I asked Joe.

"Nope," Joe said, holding his palm before me. "There are two things that all red-blooded Americans love naked. One of them is his drink." Joe punctuated this statement with a knowing wink.

I poured some lambanog into two polished coconut shells and gave one of the shells to Joe. I diluted my drink with some of Joe's whisky. It became milky. We were both seated on thee floor. I poured some of my drink on the bamboo floor. It went through the slits to the ground below.

“Hey, what are you doing." Joe asked, "throwing good liquor away?"

"No, Joe," I said. "It is the custom here always to give back to the earth a little of what we have taken from the earth."

"Well," he said, raising his shell, "here's to the end of the war!"

"Here is to the end of the war!" I said, also lifting my drink.

I quaffed my drink down and followed it with a slice of kalamansi dipped in unrefined salt. It made my stomach all sunshine. Joe lushed his drink but reacted in a peculiar way. His eyes popped out like a frog's and his hand clutched his throat. He looked as if he had swallowed a centipede.

“Quick, a chaser!” he said.

I gave him a slice of kalamansi dipped in coarse salt. He squirted it in his mouth. But it was too late. The kalamansi did not help him. I don't think even a fire extinguisher could have helped him.

“What is wrong, Joe?" I asked.

"Nothing" he said. "The first shot always affects me this way." He was panting hard and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

"Well, the first drink always acts like a mine sweeper," I said, "but this second one will be smooth."

I filled his shell for a second time. Again I attenuated my drink with Joe's whisky. I gave Joe his bowl. I noticed that he was beaded with perspiration. He had unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. Joe took his stuff but he did not seem very anxious. I lifted my shell and said:

"Here is to America!"

I was trying to be a perfect host.

"Here is to America!" Joe said.

We both consumed our cordials. Joe again reacted in a funny way. His neck stretched out like a turtle's. And now he was panting like a carabao gone amok. He grasped his tie, threw it to one side, and said:

"Oh, Christ, for a while I thought it was my tongue!"

After this he started to tinker with his teeth.

“What is wrong, Joe?" I asked, still trying to be the host of hosts.

"Plenty. This dammed stuff has loosened my bridgework."

As Joe exhaled, a moth flying around the thickening flame fell dead. He stared at the dead moth and said:

"And they talk of DDT."

"Well, how about another draw?" I asked. "It is what we came here for."

"No, thanks," he said. "I'm through."

"Surely you will not refuse my hospitality?"

"O.K. Just one more."

I poured the juice in the shells and again thinned mine with whiskey. I handed Joe his drink.

"Here's to the Philippines," he said.

Joe sipped his drink. I could not see very clearly in the quivering light, but I could have sworn that I saw smoke come out of his ears.

"This stuff must be radioactive," he said.

He threw the remains of his toddy on the wall and yelled:

"Blaze, goddam you, blaze!"

Then just as I was beginning to get thirsty, Joe began to act in a very unaccountable manner. He fell into the delusion that I was a Japanese Warning me not to try to escape, he demanded my unconditional surrender. He wanted to know why I had bombed Pearl Harbor and committed so many atrocities when Americans had never done them any harm. I had a difficult time trying to convince him that I was anything but a Nipponese and that I had never dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor or anywhere else, for that matter. In short, that I was what I was – just a poor Filipino boy trying to get along.

I tried offering him another drink. He declined, saying that he could not be bribed with saki but that he was going to make things easy for me at the War Crimes Commission if I fixed him up with some geisha. He said that he was privy to all the war atrocities that I had perpetrated but as he was a personal friend of General Douglas MacArthur, I need not worry. He had no racial prejudice, he said, and insisted on proving this point with a Japanese Josan.

Then, desperately impatient for his kimono girl, he grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him, and offered me black market goods in exchange-cigarettes, chocolates, canned goods, and jeeps.

It was at this stage that Mother walked into the house. Mother was ten years older than the century. And even in the glimmer, she bore no resemblance to a geisha. Nevertheless, Joe mistook her for one. With great effort he got up on his feet and wobbled toward Mother. Mother ran out of the house screaming with Joe in hot pursuit. She unofficially broke several Olympic records that evening. They located her twenty minutes later. Some say that she was still running amain when they found her.

Her screams alarmed the entire barrio. Everyone came out armed with rifles, pistols, spears, bolos, and knives. They all thought that Japanese interlopers had penetrated the village.

Joe narrowly escaped being erroneously shot for a straggler. He staggered from side to side and then his legs turned to noodles and he collapsed on the ground—flat as a starfish.

Our wassail was over. It just goes to show you that one man's drink is another man's drink.

I knew that the soldiers had to be back in their garrison at a given hour. And since Joe had been a compotator, I felt it my obligation to take him back to camp. Our drinking together was like a bloodless compact. I tried to lift him; it was like hefting a carabao. Four friends had to help me carry Joe. The white man had become the brown man's burden! In vino veritas. (In wine, there is truth.) We placed him on a carabao-drawn sled. I took my bolo from the house, strapped it on my waist, and proceeded to take Joe back.

After two hours, I arrived at the plane field. I found out which tent he belonged to and took him there. His friends helped me to take him to his cot. They were glad to see their bottle-fatigued buddy back. Everyone thanked me for taking him home. As I was leaving, one of his friends called me and said:

“Hey, you! How about a can of beer before you go?"

"No, thanks," I said. "We Filipinos are mild drinkers."

Three Cheers for Clarita

2021-07-06T13:44:00.002-07:00

"Young Girl" (2015) by Romeo Tabuena

Clarita was eight years old but she was so small for her age that people thought she was no more than five or six. But for all her small size, she stood at the head of her class. Her mind was very keen; she was very wide awake.

One day she heard her mother and father talking about burglars who had been victimizing the neighborhood. The police had been unable to catch them. "I hope they don't come here," her mother said. "I'm terribly afraid of burglars."

"Don't worry," her father laughed. "If a burglar comes, he will come at midnight. You probably won't even know about it."

"If a burglar comes, I'll catch him," Clarita suddenly interrupted in her small, childish voice.

"Oh, you will!" her father laughed again. "How are you going to catch a burglar, Miss Policewoman?

"I know how to catch a burglar. My teacher says I'm very clever. And I Won't need your revolver that Mama keeps in the aparador, either."

"Look, young lady," her father said seriously. "You are not to touch that revolver that Mama keeps in the aparador."

"I won't need it," Clarita said firmly. "I told you I can catch a burglar all by myself."

"Isn't she cute?" Mrs. Salas whispered to her husband. That night Mr. and Mrs. Salas went to a movie. Clarita was left with the maid, who was an elderly woman. Before the couple left, Mr. Salas told the servant, "Be sure to lock all the doors. That burglar might come around."

After her father and mother left, Clarita played for a while and then went to bed. It was a very warm summer night. Suddenly Clarita woke up bathed in perspiration. She tossed around in bed for a while, feeling itchy and uncomfortable. She could hear the maid snoring loudly. Suddenly she felt very thirsty. She tried to wake the servant up, but only deep snores answered her.

Clarita was a very brave little girl. She decided to go downstairs and get a drink of water. It was a bright moonlit night, so Clarita did not turn on the light. As she walked to the kitchen on the ground floor, she could see a ray of light under the edge of the closed door. She thought the maid had forgotten to turn off the light. The little girl opened the door and saw a man. He stared at her as she entered.

"Good evening," Clarita said politely.

The man said nothing.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"I'm 1st paying you a very short visit," the man said.

“That's nice" Clarita smiled. The child looked very innocent in her white nightgown. She said, "I came down, for I am hungry. I'm going to drink a glass of milk. Would you like some chicken adobo we had for supper? It is very delicious." As Clarita spoke, she went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took the adobo. As the little girl sat down to drink her milk, the man drew near and extended a hand to pick up a leg of chicken.

Your hands are dirty. You must wash them before you eat. Mama always makes me wash my hands" Clarita told him in a serious manner. "There are some knives and forks in that drawer."

As she and the man were eating, Clarita continued, "These knives and forks are only for everyday use. We have real silver knives and spoons and forks."

“Yes?" The man's voice was very eager. "Where do you keep them?"

"And we also have real silver platters that my mother said she inherited from her grandmother," the child continued as she drank her milk slowly.

"Come, little girl, show me where your mother keeps her silver. Are they here in the kitchen? in the dining room?" The man's eyes gleamed with a greedy light.

"I’ll tell you," Clarita said. "But go ahead and finish your chicken. My father says the best meat of the chicken is close to the bone." The man hurriedly bit the last piece of meat from the chicken and stood up to hurry Clarita.

"I'll show you where everything is," Clarita said. "We had a party a few days ago and my mother used all her silver things. She says they are of pure silver and very, very expensive."

"Yes, yes," said the man, getting impatient. "Where are they?"

"My mother keeps them in a box which she locks very carefully. She generally keeps the box in our room. But I remember now. Marta —that's our maid —has not brought the box upstairs yet. It is still here, I think. Let me see.

As the little girl spoke, she led the man into a small room called a dispensa. There's the box. It is full of silver things. I knew that Marta had not yet brought it upstairs. Mother will be very angry with her when she knows about this."

The man entered the small room eagerly, and when he bent down to pick up the heavy box, Clarita quickly closed the door and turned the key. Then she sat down to wait for her father and mother. She told them that morning that she would catch the burglar.

She did not have to wait long. As she sat on the floor fixing her nightgown to cover her legs and protect them from the mosquitoes, she heard a taxi stop in front of the house. Her mother and father had come home.

Go Then and Rebuild Our Scarred Land

2021-07-06T13:31:00.001-07:00

by: Dioscoro L. Umali

"Tranquil" (2020) by Abelardo Maceda

Our once magnificent dipterocarp forests have been ravaged. Our rivers are polluted with silt; our coral reefs destroyed by blast fishing, its mangroves decimated, and Laguna de Bay is now a dying lake. If this plunder 1s not checked, the Philippines will experience increasing poverty and despair, and spiral downwards into the ranks of the very poorest of nations.

Today, our legendary Philippine mahogany forests are just that legend. Out of the original 30 million hectares of trees, only 900,000 hectares of virgin dipterocarp forest remain. At present rates of cutting, these could disappear within seven to 12 years - just as the first-born of today's graduating class enter primary school..

For most of my life, I have worked with farmers, here in the Philippines and in other parts of Asia. I came to discover that they have the capacity to distill wisdom from daily life into pithy proverbs. And one of these illustrates the issue of flawed stewardship I have raised.

"We do not inherit the land from our parents," farmers often say. "We merely borrowed it from our children."

Is this then how we, of the fading generation, handled the wealth you entrusted us? We dissipated your environmental capital. In so doing, we endangered your capacity to provide, in the years ahead, daily bread for your families from the land you loaned us.

As prodigal parents, we radically altered your future. Your natural resource base is depleted. Greed of the past has seen to that. We lowered the threshold for violence by breeding social unrest. Above all, you will have little time to correct our failures.

What hurts most is we stripped the land of its beauty.

Your children will no longer thrill, as we once did, to the heart-stopping dive of a hawk. Nor will they breathe in the heady fragrance of pine forests.

The rich texture of Philippine mahogany will be, at best a quaint story for them. Their panoramas will be of drab landscapes, blanketed by sterile cogon grass, not the verdant meadows we knew as youngsters...

There is now an awakening, both in the Philippines and elsewhere, to dangers that threaten our environment. This is strongest among religious groups and organizations formed by Citizens, their wish to come together and husband the thin soil, nurse the blighted landscape, and reforest the scarred land, is growing.

Nature also has an amazing God-given capacity to regenerate. The ruin and debris are soon swept away by nature’s forgiving hand, when the hand of man is no longer raised against her.

Magtagumpay Ka Kaya?

2021-07-06T13:22:00.001-07:00

ni: Cinio Villa

"Just Another Workday" (2021) by Nazareth Bordonada

Malaki ang paniniwala kong nang isilang ang tao ay may kakambal na siyang kapalaran. Hindi nga lamang ito masilayan sa panahon ng kanyang kamusmusan, ngunit sa kanyang paglaki ay unti-unti itong sumisibol; at sa kanyang pagbibinata o pagdadalaga, ito'y patuloy na nag-uusbong hanggang sa mapagtagumpayan niyang malinang at mapaunlad.

Ang tao ang humahanap ng kanyang kapalaran. Totoong mahalaga ang pananalig sa Dakilang Lumikha ngunit iaasa na lamang ba ng tao ang kanyang kapalaran sa Diyos? May kasabihan nga tayong mga Pilipino na "Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa." Ngunit napakarami nang tungkulin ang Diyos sa Kanyang mga nilikha. At napakarami na ng tao na may mga kahilingan sa Diyos. Sana'y isantabi na lamang muna ng iba ang kanyang mga kahilingan alang-alang sa mga taong higit na nangangailangan ng tulong at kalinga.

Ngunit ang Diyos kaya'y wala ring kapaguran sa pagtugon sa mga humihingi sa Kanya ng atensiyon? Paano kung magising na lamang tayo isang umaga at sabihin ng Diyos sa atin na, "Hindi mo dapat iasa sa Akin ang lahat ng bagay na kaya mong makamit".

Para ano pa at pinagkalooban kita ng mga matang magagamit mo sa pagtanaw mo sa mga bagay na makakatulong sa iyong sarili upang makamit mo ang iyong minimithi?

Para ano pa at pinagkalooban kita ng mga labi upang magamit mo sa pakikipag- usap at pagpapahayag ng iyong nais sabihin na makatutulong sa pag-unlad ng iyong katauhan?

Para ano pa at pinagkalooban kita ng isip at puso upang magamit mo nang may katalinuhan at kabutihan na siyang susi ng iyong tagumpay? Ang mga kamay at paa mo, hindi ba't magagamit mo rin ang mga ito sa lalong maaliwalas na pagtahak mo sa landas ng tagumpay

Kung minsan nga, may mga lumalapit sa akin, karamiha'y mga naging estudyante ko sa dalubhasaang pinagturuan ko. Ipasok ko raw sila sa trabaho. Kahit daw saan. Kahit daw ano kung talagang walang bakanteng paaralan na mapagtuturuan. Nakapanghihinayang, apat na taon silang nagsunog ng kilay sa dalubhasaan (kung minsa'y higit pa sa apat) pero hanggang sa makapagtapos ng pag-aaral sa kolehiyo at unibersidad ay hindi nagagamit ang kursong kanilang natapos. Ngunit ito ba ang sukatan upang talikuran nila ang uri ng edukasyong kanilang natamo?

May isa akong naging estudyante na sa pagkakaalala ko'y nabigyan ko ng mataas na marka sa Malikhaing Pagsulat, isang asignatura sa pagpapakadalubhasa sa Filipino. Ngunit nang minsang magkita kami ay kapwa kami nagulat sa isa't isa. ikinagulat ko ang trabahong kinasadiakan niya, at marahil ay iyon din ang ikinagulat niya nang ako'y kanyang makita. Nagsisilbi siya bilang saleslady sa isang malaking department store sa Harrison Plaza. Walang masanma sa trabahong ito. Ngunit ang makita kong kahanay niya ang ilang empleyadong hindi nakatapos ng pag-aaral sa kólehiyo ay parang punyal na tumimo' sa aking dibdib. Biglang pumasok sa isip ko ang mataas na markang tinanggap niya sa asignaturang kinuha niya sa akin. Naisip ko, bakit hindi sa Liwayway, sa Daily Bulletin, o sa mga kilalang publishing house siya namasukan nang sa gayon ay magamit niya ang angking talino sa pagsulat? Sayang. Kung naglakas loob lamang siyang lumapit sa akin.

Naalaala ko tuloy ang isang artikulong nabasa ko tungkol sa yumaong Brig. Gen. H.M. Menzi nang ginunita nito ang kanyang kabataan. Ganito ang pagkakapahayag niya: "Maaga akong naghanapbuhay" aniya. "Nang panahon namin ay kailangang magsikap ka upang ikaw ay mabuhay. Ngayon, karamihan sa mga kailangan ng mga kabataan ay halos iniaabot na lang sa kanila. Napakalapit naman ng paaralan ngunit sumasakay pa sila sa halip na maglakad na lang."

Ayon sa magiting na heneral, ang bagay na iyon ay sagwil sa pagiging malikhain at pagiging maunlad ng isang tao. Lagi na lang daw umaasa sa kabutihang maipagkakaloob ng mga bagay para sa kanyang sarili. Waiang kaparaanan. Paano nga ba naman uunlad sa buhay ang taong katulad ng kanyang nabanggit?

May mga tao na mas marami pang nasasabi kaysa sa nagagawa. Kaya ko iyon, Mararating ko iyon. Yayaman din ako: Ito ang madalas nilang sabihin, pero hindi naman kakikitaan ng pagkilos. Walang hakbang na ginagawa para maging matagumpay sa buhay.

Sa aking palagay, malaki ang nagagawa ng ating kultura sa di pagtatagumpay ng isang tao. May mga kilala akong nais umunlad ang buhay. Pupunta raw sa Saudi upang humanap ng kapalaran. Ngunit bakit hindi naisakatuparan ang mithiing ito? Una, tiyak na pipigilin ng mga mahal sa buhay, kung di man ang asawa ay ang mga magulang.

Ganito ang kadalasang sasabihin ng mga moralistang kasama sa bahay: "Matanda na ako. Matitiis mo ba akong hindi makita kung sakaling dumating na ang huling sandali ng aking buhay? Saka paano ang mga anak mo, ang mga kapatid mo?"

Madaling makapanghina ng loob ang sinasabi ng ilang matatandang kasama natin sa bahay. Ang labis na close family ties, para sa akin, ay ugat sa di pag-unlad ng tao, gayon din ng bayang ating sinilangan. Hindi kaya maaaring takasan ito sandali upang maging maunlad naman ang buhay ng ating kapwa? Isipin na lamang na ang pangingibang-bansa ay di nangangahulugang itinatakwil mo ang bayang pinagmulan. Ito'y hindi pagtataksil sa liping iyong kinagisnan. Manapa'y ito ang landas ng kaunlaran, landas tungo sa iyong pananagumpay.

Isipin pang karamihan sa mga kababayan nating nagtratrabaho sa Saudi ay ang di man lamang nakatungtong ng mataas na antas sa pag-aaral. Hindi ko sinasabing di mahalaga ang edukasyon. Ngunit nakapanlulumong mabatid na kung sino pa yaong kaunti ang napag-aralan ay siya pang buo ang loob na suungin ang mapanghamong buhay. Handang iwan ang pamilya upang kumita, maging ito'y sa labas ng bansa. At sa kanyang pagbabalik, higit pang malaki ang kanyang naipon, higit pang marami ang kanyang naipundar na gamit kaysa sa mga taong kung tawagin ay propesyonal. Ang tanging puhunan ay lakas ng loob, determinasyon, at ambisyon. Samahan pa ng sipag, talino, at tiyaga. Magandang puhunan para makamit ang tagumpay.

Kailangang kumilos. Ang tagumpay ay abot-kamay lamang. Ang tao mismo ang makatutuklas nito. Hindi ang iba, kundi ang may katawan.

Remembering That Day

2021-07-06T13:10:00.002-07:00

by: John L. Silva

"The Fighting Filipinos" (1943) by Manuel Rey Isip

When disheartened friends predict acquittal for the embattled president, when people shun the newspapers and television to escape from it all, when hopelessness becomes seductively fashionable, I pull out this crinkled sepia-toned newspaper and gaze at it long and hard. It brings me back to the day when I was the proudest Filipino on earth.

Imagine my country: no longer an itty-bitty page 12 news item about another bus driving off a cliff, or another typhoon, or another kidnapping. Our disaster-prone country summed up in 20 words or less and read by New Yorkers once a month.

That is, until those heady days in February when the Philippines landed on the front page, right below the masthead, with headlines bigger than all the news items published about the country in a whole year.

That cold morning, I sprinted over to the corner Korean deli to pick up The New York Times. Seeing me, the owner leapt over the counter, handed me the paper, wouldn't take my money and embraced me, crying for our happiness and hoping his people would have the same good fortune one day.

I hailed a cab and the driver was Haitian and he could see my beaming happy face through his rear view mirror. He figured me out by the way I clutched the newspaper to my heart, more than a valentine, more than the Ten Commandments. I was holding my passport to go home again.

I gave the driver a high five congratulating him and his people for having kicked out their dictator Duvalier two weeks earlier. He gave me the same beaming smile and turned up his taped reggae to full blast as the cab shimmied uptown to the Philippine Consulate on Fifth Avenue.

The Consulate was now "ours", despite the portrait gaze of the fairy tale First Couple on the wall and the lingering smell of adobo and cigarette smoke in the trapped venal air. The Filipino thugs with the dark glasses who photographed us picketing the consulate days earlier, who jeered us and threatened to make relatives back home disappear, were packing their gym bags. After asking for our forgiveness, they made a mousy rear exit.

Outside, a crowd of Filipinos had gathered: New Jersey doctors, Brooklyn nurses, midtown bookkeepers, Park Avenue nannies, forgotten exiles, homesick students, and chunky American men married to petite Filipinas. me looked stunned, many laughed and cried alternately, others gazed upwards, beyond the concrete canyon, beyond the cloudless brilliant sky, to the heavens.

Pentel pens and cartolinas appeared. I wrote on mine, in big letters, "THE BASTARD IS GONE" and draped it on my chest and followed a line of people on one sidewalk singing the National Anthem lustily. Cars and busses honked loud and long and thumbs-up stuck out of windows. Unknown newsmen dropped their attaché cases and hugged us. Messengers jumped their bikes and break-danced with nurses. Japanese tourists posed for pictures in front of the Consulate. Fifth Avenue became a barrage of merry honking, cathartic yelps, and impromptu dancing. It was the day that had been dreamt and hoped and prayed for.

Having this sepia newspaper may be the automatic reflex of a collector keen on its resale value. But there were many other people at that day's end who kept their newspaper, encased it lovingly in plastic, and stored it some place safe and dry. Not for resale. But to remember a day when our people forsook being ciphers in a mandated universe of suffering, and boldly charted a new beginning. To remember when it was the proudest day to be a Filipino away from the homeland.

To remember a day when hopelessness was not in the vocabulary of a worthy and decent people.

Testament From A Prison Cell

2021-07-06T12:59:00.005-07:00

by: Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.

"Laban" (2014) submitted to "Ninoy@30: Tragedy to Triumph Painting Contest"

Our history as a people has been an epic struggle to end oppression and to be free. In whole-and even in part-it ranks with the immortal stand made by Leonidas' at the Pass of Thermopylae, the storming of the Bastille by the rebels of Paris, the Liberty-or-Death fight waged by Thirteen American Colonies3, the Defense of Britain by the English on nothing more than Winston Churchill's promise of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

As a history, it has been ennobling as it has been inspiring-washed, as it were, in the blood of our forebearers, which gave it its glory and its purity, and sanctified as we shall always recall proudly, with their lives, which gave it its sterling nobility.

It is the supreme irony of our history that, having shaken off alien yokes, we now find ourselves groaning under a domestic yoke even more oppressive.

We are captives of a domestic tyranny that has outdone any and all of the foreign invaders in denying us our right and liberties as men, and in the bestial fashion in which this was done.

So, we find ourselves again in a time of trials-a time that demands each of us an unstinting, heroic response.

We must fight to regain our freedom. We cannot merely remain passive and wait for it to fall as a gift from heaven. For it is a futile hope, as the tyranny has shown us, to hope that it will come by the grace of the tyrant. Rather than give up martial rule, he will "institutionalize" it, as the tyrant himself has bluntly told us.

But, if we must be truly free, it must be a freedom never to be purchased at the cost of conviction and self-respect. Man must be ready—nay, willing!—to die if he cannot live as a free man. For freedom, is never dear at any price.

Truly, it is the breath of life.

And man's readiness to suffer-to die-will light the torch of freedom, which can never be extinguished! No, not when it is in his heart and the hearts of his fellowmen!

It may not come today-or in this lifetime. But it’ll come, inexorably. In any case, wherever such a man stands-be it in a tyrant's dungeon, where he makes his freedom's cry, or before a military tribunal, where he stands in righteous defiance-there, Mr. President, gentlemen of this Commission, there freedom stands. You cannot stifle it, much less kill it, with trumped up charges, perjured witnesses, "evidence tortured into existence."

I find no need to affirm my innocence. In God's own season, the truth will be known.

My struggle is against the system of injustice that enables one man to judge the truth of his own actions-to be the accuser, prosecutor, and judge in a tribunal of his own creation; a court inescapably bound to follow his dictates.

My struggle is against the system that makes a mockery of justice by ' reducing all our judges to the status of hirelings, subservient to the will of the dictator.

My struggle is against the system that enables the dictator to own, control, and manipulate-by himself or through his proxies-the mass media, so he can distort the truth, mislead the people by making vice appear as virtue and thereby weaken the resolve to be free.

My struggle is against the system that purports to promote the public welfare while enriching a few who shamelessly display the fruits of their greed and lust for wealth.

My struggle is against the system that not only enslaves our people but compels them to declare themselves for tyranny and their oppressor. My struggle is against the system that pretends to save democracy while actually destroying it.

The tragedy of our time is that our people are faced by a double fear: the fear of the problem, which is the continuing tyranny; and the fear of the solution, which is the need to resist and suffer, if need be, with true courage.

Many of us have become like eunuchs: We know how to do it, but we cannot. We have lost our manhood.

My duty, as I see it, is to tell our people that we must not only dream of a good and just society. We must resolve to make this dream come true.

At the risk of being hated and despised, we must expose those despicable cowards in our midst who call themselves leaders while hiding behind the cloak of false prudence.

We must resolutely oppose those molders of public opinion who display such sycophancy as to put to shame those functionaries described in Suetonius' life of Tiberius.

Who was the Rajah's Son?

2021-07-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

by: Loreto Paras-Sulit

"Rajah Sulayman" by J. Bulaong

Baybay was once a flourishing barangay by the sea, a happy and prosperous barangay. Those were the just and peaceful times of their ruler, the wise and understanding Rajah Bayani.

But suddenly, as a clear April sky is torn savagely into dark pieces by thunder and lightning, tragedy struck in the Baybay barangay, tearing it out of its peaceful contours. The pirates from the South descended with all their fury on the sleeping barangay one early dawn, and they plundered and killed and burned.

All the warriors defending Rajah Bayani's gleaming bamboo palace fell. That was why the pirates captured the rajah's young son, little Prince Alon, and his playmate and trusted servant, the faithful Lawin. Swiftly the pirates fled with their precious captive. They tied the young boy to the prow of their leader's vinta, lean and swift as an arrow. Truly like an arrow it darted across the darkening waters to be lost for all time, it seemed.

The remaining warriors rushed to the shore and got a last glimpse of their captured young prince lashed to the prow like a common captive but bearing himself like the rajah's son that he was, calm and unaired. Burned dwellings can be replaced, lost belongings can be found again; but a broken will and a crushed spirit are shattered pieces of the life of a man, whether ruler, freeman, or slave. So Baybay became a leaderless barangay, for the will to live had left the old Rajah Bayani when his son was lost to him.

He groped about his palace like a blind man; he listened without hearing: he scarcely ate; he slept not at all. Seeing death so clearly marked on his face, his people let him be. Death would be a kindness to the old rajah.

Heroically, the people of Baybay worked to build their barangay anew. They built new dwellings, they traded, they farmed, they ruled themselves. But the people never forgot their lost young rajah and his trusted servant. They were faithful people. So, the traders plying the open seas dared to go to unlikely places to get news of the captured Alon and his servant, the faithful Lawin. Runners of the barangay peered into every young boy's face in the hope that their young rajah could be found again.

The women of the barangay prayed ceaselessly to the good God Bathala: "Watch over our young rajah, wherever he may be. Please do not let the faithful Lawin weaken in serving Prince Alon." They prayed and hoped and waited. They never ceased to wait. Then one day, from the blue, sun-drenched seas came a vinta, long and lean as an arrow. It was manned by two young lads, brown from exposure to the sun and wind, with bleeding hands and rumpled hair. Warriors of Baybay ran to the shore. With throbbing hearts, they knew that these lads who had returned were the long-lost Alon and his faithful Lawin.

The two boys were strangely alike in all ways. In height, in figure, in the contours of their faces they could have passed for brothers. They move lightly as young deer; they looked at the warriors without a trace of fear and yet with restraint, as if they were strangers touching unknown land for the first time.

How many years had passed by since that tragic day that the people of Baybay lost their young prince? Twelve long weary years enough time to have matured the young child of three and his Lawin into these two sun-burnt lads from the sea. And never had the people forgotten that vinta, long, lean as an arrow. Wondering, one of the lads asked, "Is this the Baybay barangay? We are looking for our people. A long time ago pirates stole us and took us to the South. We grew up among them as their slaves, but we swore we would be free one day. We escaped and now we are free. Are you the Baybay people?"

The shore was now crowded with men, women, and children. They stared back in wonder at the two lads. Which one was their prince, their rajah's son? An elder cried to the heavens, "Thanks be to the good Bathala. He has returned our ruler. Who is Prince Alon?" The two boys only gave them puzzled glances. They shook their heads and one of them answered: "We are nameless. We do not know each other's name. We have forgotten our names. Hunger, hardship, the lashes of our captors drove our names out of our memories. All we remember is Baybay, for the pirates always called us, Hoy, you slaves from Baybay. We call each other friend, so you may call us alike kaibigan."

The inhabitants of Baybay looked at each other. "This cannot be, they said. "One of these boys is Alon and the other is Lawin. Poor, ill-starred boys! How shall we find out who is our rajah's son? "Bathala will surely give us a sign. In the meanwhile, let us welcome these boys."

The boys walked softly on the sand as if on sacred ground. Eagerly they sniffed the home-winds of Baybay. Truly it was different here. Tears welled into the boys' eyes and now unashamedly they let them flow. For they were home at last!

Life took on new meaning for the Baybay barangay. A leader had returned, and all the people took this as an auspicious omen that the good old prosperous days would return. Men worked with a lighter heart; women went through their household tasks singing their old lullabies.

But the elders—the old men of the barangay who formed the advisory council, had a big problem on their hands. How were they to tell the prince apart from his faithful friend?

“Why must you worry about it?" laughed one of the boys. "Make each of us the ruling rajah alternately. Each of us will serve for one full moon. Is that not an answer to the problem?" Then the other rejoined, "We suffered together. Without each other we would not have won our freedom. Now we must share everything."

The elders shook their heads and looked at the boys with com- passionate understanding. How could they tell these lads that one ruled not with strength or just the willingness to share and give, but that it is a divine power that guides the rightful ruler when times of stress come?

How to find out? How? Without telling the boys, the elders sent them through tests of their courage, their strength, their keenness in judgment, their quickness in understanding. their resources in danger and uncertainty. And both the lads were equally brave, keen, resourceful, and alert. For he who had been the servant had l0st the shackles of servitude and served in freedom and equality. He who had been prince had given up his cold aloofness and lived freely and on terms of equality with his companion.

But the destiny to rule had been given to one of these lads and that destiny must be fulfilled.

While the elders worried and sighed and racked their brains for a solution, the two boys hunted and swam and sailed on the seas around the barangay.

One day they came upon a vinta sailing secretly near the shores of Baybay. The keen eyes of the boys picked out the lone occupant of the spying vinta. The long years of their cruel capture had carved in their memory that crouching figure. He could be no other than one of the pirates from the South.

Relentlessly, the boys gave pursuit, and the cornered spying pirate, losing his bearings, grounded his vinta on the unseen rocks of Baybay shore.

Somebody from the barangay had seen the pursuit; so, when the boys landed, there was quite a crowd to give fierce welcome to this pirate. But he was a courageous one who had known the dangers when he set out on this hazardous trip. As he looked at his captors, his eyes lighted up with recognition when he saw the two boys.

"Ah!" he snarled. "Our former slaves from Baybay, although one was not a slave but a. . ."

"A what?" leaped the question from the elders.

“A rajah's son," smiled the pirate.

“Which one?" the elders eagerly asked.

“Which one?" repeated the pirate mockingly. "I do not remember that he continued with a sneer, The warriors leaped on him in fury. but the pirate knew well he was safe as long as he had the secret with him. So, he taunted them and said: "Perhaps I can remember for a price-perhaps I can remember which is the rajah's son if I can be free."

“To the crocodiles!" decided the old men in fury. "Throw him to the crocodiles to be torn slowly apart until he gives the answer. Pirate, do you understand? You shall not escape, and neither shall you keep your secret. We have our way of tearing secrets from swollen lips."

The pirate paled in spite of himself. He had heard of the crocodiles of Baybay and how they gnawed at captive’s morsel by morsel from toe to head until life was completely gone from them. The pirate gazed wildly from man to man, from warrior to freeman, from the youth to the old. In every eye he saw only the hard, cruel judgment. These people had waited all these years for their reckoning. And they were going to have it at the gleaming edge of crocodiles' teeth.

Then from the crowd one of the boys stepped forward, speaking naturally, as a leader speaks. "Let this pirate go," he commanded. "He shall not say he declared who is a rajah's son through fear and torture. Let him keep his secret forever, for not one of us can tell whether his answer has been true or false. Surely the good Bathala will give a sign to tell you who the rajah's son is."

Then the people of Baybay saw the boy in a new light. Truly he was the fairer, the taller one, the more divine one. For when all the rest of them, including his companion, were blinded with a common desire for revenge, here was a boy who saw crystal-clear and justly.

As one, the people turned to him and knew that they had seen the sign. They cried, "Truly you ‘are Alon. You are the son of our just and understanding rajah!"

Grandma Day

2021-07-06T12:40:00.001-07:00

by: Gilda Cordero-Fernando

"Grandma" (2019) by Ruben Calimlim

Grandma Day is what I call that day I devote solely to the grandchildren. We may spend it in the house or I may take them out to a special puppet show, a stage play, a kiddie Concert or museum with a children's exhibit. Or we could have a picnic lunch. I try my best to avoid taking them to a movie or to buy toys, which I think is a cop-out. It is the day everything I believe in must be put into practice, so I plan very well.

Grandma Day is supposed to be a healthy day, and so the kids cannot ask for Coke or bottled drink or any junkees. Instead, we have fresh-squeezed juice, whole-wheat sandwiches, hopia, maybe sushi, lots of popcorn, peanuts, fruits.

I used to take the grandchildren and the picnic basket and the thermos to a nook in Luneta that is an artists' sculpture garden. It was a secluded place with a fountain and shady trees around a circular stone bench where they played with their toys or did art (I encouraged origami). The toddlers napped. I have not seen it recently, but it used to be a quiet spot where people go to draw or paint or read, and once I saw a housewife cutting a dress pattern.

If we spend Grandma Day at home there is a moratorium on TV, video games and canned shows. It is the time the cousins truly discover one another. They throw all my sofa cushions into the sunken sala and dive into them. One child is always the "director" They have a great many battles between good guys and "creatures," walking up and down the ledges and over my snow-white pillows. I am always the monster. They like to include me because I can spit and claw and hiss and am an expert at all kinds of dying.

One day we were finally able to put together some ethnic instruments - a bamboo xylophone, a drum, a rain stick (long bamboo containing mongo beans that sound like rain when upended), several bamboo clappers, maracas, tambourines and prayer bells. The grandchildren are aged eight down to one-and-a-half and so they can only do percussion. My son-in-law directs this passionate band in interesting beats like singkil and ati-atihan. The holy days are observed with some kind of ritual, such as a tableau. On Christmas it consists of the kids costuming themselves (with the help of their mamas) with swags of cloth from my old baul. They become Mary, Joseph, the Three Kings, the shepherds and also the animals around the manger. There is no dialogue because no one is a particularly good actor. The whole idea is just to be able to freeze the tableau and snap their Christmas photo quick, before the Baby Jesus (the youngest grandchild) lying on straw in a soapbox begins to fret.

As the kids grow the Christmas show gets more sophisticated. Last December we had vari-colored satin cloths for backdrop and "clouds." Every child wore wings-the small one’s paper wings, the bigger ones chicken- feather wings. There was a narration and singing. Some years back the adults started getting into the act as "the animals that visited the manger."

They crawled on all fours and became very funny. Once my hefty son decided to be a donkey and carried on his back his wife (who was then Mary), with their baby, and the Flight to Egypt somehow got into the Nativity Scene.

The problem of Christmas is, of course, how to set a spiritual tone before the pandemonium of the gifts takes over. In my experience candles always create a reverend mood. One time we stuck one long candle each into a fruit of the earth -an orange, an apple, a star apple, a chico, an avocado.

Each child walked carrying this candle-fruit from a darkened room to a lighted one and around the belen. As we walked, an adult narrated the Christmas story. The candles were laid at the feet of the Christ Child with everyone singing carols.

The gifts of all the families are placed around the belen or under the tree. The names on the gifts are read by the oldest family member, Dad, into the karaoke and each recipient comes forward. Everyone in the household gets a gift, including all the former yayas and drivers and plumbers and strays who make a Christmas visit.

Our married children have their own, beautiful, traditional Christmas trees so I never bother to have one. The only "tree" I ever put up was composed of all the "animals" in the house-an elephant pedestal, a lacquered giraffe, a carousel horse, a papier mache carabao, a brass turtle carrying a betelnut box, a carved San Roque's dog. Above them hung, not a star, but a giant papier mache piñata of Philippine fruits.

I find it important to stress the significance of the holy days. When the kids are a little bigger and can take this over, I would like them to involve the neighborhood in a panunuluyan (Mary and Joseph looking for shelter). Imagine if they can have a real horse to walk them from house to house! Like it or not, the Western Easter egg hunt has overtaken us so we, too, decorate eggs and hide them on Easter Sunday. But I make a point of explaining to the kids first why the egg is used as the symbol of the Resurrection. The egg represents the world and a new beginning that was possible for us because of Christ's death and resurrection. If there are some chocolate or plastic eggs their parents have gotten from the hotels, it becomes possible to point out that a fake egg can never hatch life, never produce a live chick, only dead chocolates.

I was never happy with having just a Western ritual-so one Easter we had a salubong as well. Our big antique virgin, head covered with a black veil, was hoisted on a platform and carried by the kids from the garden to the lanai to meet the statue of Christ carried by the other kids from the kitchen. They stopped face to face under the kalachuchi tree. A simple plastic string mechanism lifted the Virgin's veil for the meeting. And the Virgin Mother beheld her risen Son. Everyone sang and threw kalachuchi. Another activity of Grandma Day is connecting the grandchildren to the family tree. On their departed great grandmother's birthday, I was moved to bring out the magnificent English china that she had left me. My children and their father planned and executed the traditional dinner that we served on this huge set of antique dishes.

The big serving plate held the chicken pochero with fat sausages, the graceful covered soup tureen, its broth. The apahap lay in its red sauce in the oval server and the pasta curled in a deep oval dish. The roast basked on the biggest bandehado, the gravy dish beside it. The fruit salad was in the same cut-glass bowl my mother served it in all her life. The fruit tray overflowed with donated grapes and mandarins. On the cake tray sat a warm apple pie.

Of course, we were using the finely embroidered tablecloth of my old home, thin from laundering and unobtrusively patched here and there. Mama's fine etched wine glasses were out, too, as my sons had good wines to pour into them. I resolve to bring out my mother's china periodically, even if I have to wash everything personally. It is the only way my grandchildren will appreciate good things - not merely look at them through the glass cabinet. Grandpa's dinner itself gives them an idea of what a good home-cooked meal in great grandma's time was like.

During the meal my husband and I try to recall anecdotes about our parents. It gives the grandchildren a sense of family history. Our children continue it when they come up with funny incidents in their own modern lives. We know they will tell and retell our stories and theirs-to their children and grandchildren, hopefully over dinner on great grandmother's plates.

The Scare of My Life

2021-07-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

"Dreams and Madness" (2020) by Alexandra Mae Dela Cruz

There was just one question left to be answered in my report when Cora, the occupant of the bed next to mine, said her final emphatic "Goodnight" to me.

"Cora, please," I said, "there's just one question I have just one question I have to answer. Can't you stay up just one minute more?"

The only answer I got was a loud yawn from Cora, who quickly get her blanket up to her ears and curled herself up, her hunched back facing. I guessed that was final. I looked around hoping to find some sleepyhead had not fallen asleep yet. But to my disappointment, the four rows of beds in the dormitory displayed nothing but white blankets with dark heads bent, the four rows of beds peeping out of them. The sight reminded me of the anatomy room in the Medicine Building, and those cadavers! If one of these girls would only wake up. I tried moving from one side of my bed to another, creating as many creaking noises as possible, but the only response was a loud snore from one of the girls. I tried turning the pages of my book noisily, coughing vigorously, dropping my pen, sneezing, and blowing my nose as forcefully as I could, but still not one of my companions stuck a head out of her blanket.

I finally decided to leave that one stupid question for tomorrow and get myself some sleep. I hurriedly dumped my books and papers on the table and was just about to creep into my blanket when I remembered that I had to turn off the light. Heavens! The switch was ten beds from mine. I got out of bed and walked straight toward the switch, avoiding the sight of those cadaverous figures on the beds.

I turned off the light and started walking back to my bed when, five beds from my own, I heard a low moan followed by an eerie creaking of a bed. That did it. I jumped into the nearest bed and tried pulling the blanket over me. But my dormitory mate was probably enjoying sweet dreams because all she did was give a romantic sigh and hug her pillow closer. Gathering all the courage I could get, I tiptoed back to my bed, pulled the blanket over my head, and tried with all my might to fall asleep.

But I could not sleep. No matter how hard I tried to think of other things, stories from Thriller, Horror Movies, and Gabi ng Lagim kept bothering me. These creepy thoughts became worse with the persistent dripping of water from the faucet, the regular tick-tock of. the clock, and the faraway sound of snores and breathing. Finding it hard to breathe, I stuck my head out of the blanket. That was when I opened my eyes and saw the luminous hands of my alarm clock pointing to twelve.

Twelve o'clock--the hour of ghosts and goblins. I could hear my heart beats faster and faster. I closed my eyes hard, clenched my fists, and held my breath.

Suddenly I heard the door slowly open and. close. Then the soft footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor. I couldn't stand the suspense —I just had to look and see.

There, in the middle aisle, just five beds away, stood a strange figure. I could see nothing but her shadowy black figure-no face, no hands-and a luminous rosary on her breast. She was coming toward my bed, slowly, softly, mysteriously. When she was at the foot of my bed, she moved her arm, and I saw her extend a bony hand, as if to pull off my blanket. I screamed; I don't know for how long. When I came to my senses, all the lights were on and there were Sister Anne, Cora, and all the girls smiling. It was like waking from a bad dream.

Everyone Must Work

2021-07-06T12:24:00.002-07:00

"Under the Sun" (2020) by Jerico Mariano

"Julio, have you fed the chickens?"

As Julio heard his mother's voice, he frowned, and a sulky look settled on his face.

"Julio!" It was his mother's voice again. "There's not a drop of water in these jars. How do you expect me to cook breakfast unless you get water from the well?"

"Work, work, work!" Julio muttered. "I'm tired of working and working all the time. I think I'll run away." As he said these words, he took his wooden clogs, went down the bamboo stairs, and walked out of the gate.

It was early in the morning and the breeze was cool and fresh. Julio walked rapidly, and when he thought that he was far enough away from home, he sat down under a mango tree which grew beside a little stream.

As he sat there, he watched white fleecy clouds sailing across the summer sky. "You don't have to work," Julio told the clouds. "You are very lucky."

Then he saw a butterfly with gay colors, fluttering from flower to flower. "You are very lucky too," Julio told the butterfly. "You do nothing but flit from flower to flower. How I envy you!"

Then he saw a bird twittering on a branch. The bird sang a beautiful melody, and as Julio listened to its song, his heart was filled with envy of the bird and dissatisfaction with his lot. "I want to be like you," he told the bird.

"I’m going to sing and whistle and not work anymore."

So, Julio leaned his back against the mango tree and began to whistle like the bird. By and by he heard some splashing beside him, and he noticed that a carabao was there wallowing in the little stream. The carabao slid expertly under the water, rolled around a while, and then remained half-submerged in the shallow water.

"You are very lucky too," Julio said. "You are enjoying a fine swim. But my mother expects me to feed the chickens and the pigs and fetch water from the well and cut up firewood for the stove. I wish I were a cloud or a butterfly or a bird or a carabao. Then I would do nothing except float around the sky or wander from flower to flower or sing on trees or swim in brooks."

The sun was now high up in the sky. Soon a man came. He went straight to the carabao, put a yoke on his neck and began to whip it away from the water.

"Goodbye, Julio," the carabao said. "I've got to work now. I have to plow the fields. I work very hard all day long" "Look, Julio," the bird said next. Julio looked at the bird and saw some dried grass in its beak. "See what I have been doing. I have been gathering twigs and dried grass for a nest. I am building one in a branch of this tree."

"Hello, Julio," the butterfly said, flying very close to the boy.

"Don't you want to join me? I am gathering food from the flowers. I get very little from each flower, so I have to work very hard all day long to get enough to eat."

Julio was astounded. He rubbed his eyes. Had he been dreaming? Had anyone really spoken to him? He stood up. He was feeling very hungry. How he wished he were home. By now, his mother would have finished cooking breakfast. He decided to go home. As he walked home, a light drizzle began to fall. It seemed to him that the raindrops were saying, "Hurry home, Julio, and don't ever run away from work again. Everyone must work."

Julio looked up and realized that the rain was coming from the clouds that he had envied that morning because they had nothing to do.

Sa Pandayan ng Karalitaan

2021-06-30T07:56:00.001-07:00

ni: Rodolfo D. Izon

"Sapot ng Kahirapan" (2010) by Christaian John M. Centeno

Ano ang kadalasang nagiging problema ng isang pamilya? Ano ang dapat gawin upang makaahon sa kahirapan? Hindi ba sa panahon ng kagipitan walang ibang magtutulungan kung hindi ang magulang at ang anak. Maliit pa lamang ako ay natuto na akong maghanapbuhay. Noon, natatandaan ko pa, pagkagaling ko mula sa eskuwela ay namimingwit ako sa bukana ng ilog sa aming bayan, upang may maiulam ang tatlo kong malilit na kapatid. Ang aking ama ay empleyado sa isang maliit na kompanya na kumikita ng dose pesos isang araw. Halos hindi makasapat sa aming pamilya ang kanyang kinikita. Walo kaming magkakapatid, ako ang panganay, tatlong sunod-sunod na babae ang sumunod sa akin, ikaapat ay si Boy at ang iba pang sumunod sa kanya ay babae nang lahat. Maliit lamang ang matrikula noon sa eskuwela kaya kahit papaano'y napapag-aral kami ng aming ama sa elementarya. Ako ay nasa ikaanim na baitang noon, ang aking kapatid na si Felisa ay nasa ikalima, nasa ikatlo si Maria, at ang aking kapatid na si Henia ay kasalukuyang nasa unang baitang. Bagama't salat kami sa gamit sa paaralan at sa baon ay hindi kami nahuhuli sa class standing. Kung hindi man kami ang manguna ay pumapangalawa kami sa sampung nakakukuha ng pinakamataas na marka. Kahit paano'y nasisiyahan ang mga magulang ko, dahil sa iyon lamang ang tanging yamang maipagmamalaki nila; ang magkaroon ng mga anak na matalino. Sa tulong ng aking Impong Angelina ay nakapaglabada si Ina, kahit na paano'y nakukuha niya ang ginagastos namin sa pag-aaral at baon; gayon din ang hinihingi ng mga maliit kong kapatid.

Kung Sabado't Linggo ay naglalako ako ng mga kakanin tulad ng ukoy, maruya, barbekyung kamote, nilagang 'saging, at nilagang kamoteng-kahoy, kasama ang aking kapatid na si Henia na siyang tagasigaw samantalang ako naman ang tagasunong ng bilao at tagasukli kung may bumibili. Nakatapos ako ng mababang paaralan bilang isang balediktoryan, kaya't nakatapos ako ng mataas na paaralan nang walang matrikula. Pagkaraan ng apat na taon maluwalhati akong nakatapos ng kursong bokasyonal. Ang aking kapatid na si Felisa ay nakapagpatuloy ng hayskul at ang aking dalawa pang kapatid ay natigil muna at tinulungan na lamang nila si Inay sa paglalabada.

Isang araw, kinausap ako ni ltay. "Hindi ka na mag-aaral sa kolehiyo, Fermin. Tama na sa iyo ang makapagtapos ng hayskul, tutal maaari ka na namang mamasukan sa ilang kompanya riyan." Parang dumagan ang daigdig sa akin sa sinabi ni Itay. Kilala ko siya kung magpasiya. Ang sinabi niya ay sinabi na niya. Ngunit nagbabasakali pa rin ako. "Itay, kahit na ho sa kapitolyo, gusto ko ho kasing kumuha ng inhenyeriya, magtatrabaho na lamang ho ako sa araw." Subalit isang nakatutulig na "hindi" ang nagpatahimik sa akin. "Huwag mong yakapin ang di mo kayang yakapin, napakataas ng iyong ambisyon."

Sabagay, tama siya. Marami kaming magkakapatid. Kung pag-aaralin pa nga naman niya ako sa kolehiyo ay baka mamatay na kaming dilat sa gutom. "Tama ang leksiyon namin noon sa Pop Ed, mahirap ang buhay ng maraming anak kaysa kaunti."

Ngunit matigas man ang pasiya ni ltay ay lalong matigas ang aking pasiya, pinatigas ng masidhing pagnanasang umunlad. Makaahon sa burak ng kahirapan. Dala ang ilang pirasong damit at kaunting naipon sa pagkakargador ng palay sa mga makina ay walang paalam akong umalis sa amin. Pumunta ako sa Maynila at nakipagsapalaran. Kaloob marahil ng Diyos ay napasok ako sa publikasyon. Pumasa ako bilang dibuhista ng komiks dahil sa kaunting kaalaman sa paaralang bokasyonal noon sa probinsiva at sa tulong ng mga kasamahang tapos ng Fine Arts. Sa dahilang likas ang kahusayan ko sa pagguhit ay nabuhay ako, nakaupa sa isang maliit na apartment.

lba pala ang kahit na paano'y may nalalaman, sa aking inuupahang maliit na apartment ay nagtayo ako ng Isang -shirt Printing at hindi naman ako nabigo. Tumatanggap din ako ng pa "drowing ng mga mag-aaral kung gabi at pagleletra ng diploma, hanggang sa unti-unti ay lumakas ang aking shop. Naging dahilan ivon tnan magbitiw ako sa gawain sa publikasyong aking pinagtatrabahuhan. Nagsumigasig ako sa maliit na negosyo at kumuha ng mga katulong na katulad ko noon ay humahanap ng kapalaran dahil sa karalitaan sa probinsiya.

Sumulat ako kina Itay at Inay, nagpadala ako ng pera ngunit sinadva kong ilihim ang aking kinaroroonan... Aywan kung bakit.Lumipas pa ang mga taon, hindi ko alam kung bakit tiniis silang huwag makita. Marahil ito ay dala ng hinanakit ko noon, ngunit hindi ko sila matiis na hindi padalhan ng pera. Halos kalahati ng aking kinikita ang ipinadadala ko.

Ngayon ay narito ako at lulan ng isang Philippine Rabbit patungong probinsiya. Labing-apat na taon na ang matuling lumipas, ganitong-ganito rin noon, magulo ang aking isip subalit nananabik.

Huminto ang sasakyan at walang-kibo akong bumaba. Sumakay ako sa isa sa mga nakaparadang tricycle. "Napakalaki na pala ng ipinagbago ng aming bayan." Habang papalapit ako sa amin ay parang nagbabara ang aking lalamunan, parang tambol ang aking dibdib at patuloy sa panlalamig ang aking dalawang palad at talampakan.

Sa bahay, gulat na gulat ang mga kapatid ko, takang-takang nangapatigil sa kanilang pagkakatayo. Nagdrama si Inay, niyakap ako at nag-iiyak, nagsermon si Itay ngunit sandal lamang at ayos na ang lahat. Nanibago ako sa amin. lbang-iba ang ayos ng paligid.

Ang bakod na buho ay hollow blocks na, ang sahig na kawayan ay marmol na, ang tagni-tagning diyaryo na nasa dinding at mga lumang letrato ng mga artista ay pawang mga diploma na ng pagtatapos at mga larawan ng mga kapatid ko na pawang nangakatoga. Wala na rin ang kusinilya. Electric stove na, ang tapayan na imbakan ng inumin ay napalitan na ng Frigidaire, talagang malaki na ang pagbabago.

Matapos akong kumain ay kuwentuhan, napakahabang pagbabalitaan.

Ang aking kapatid na si Felisa ay nakatapos ng komersiyo sa kapitolyo na balak ko sanang pasukan. Kasalukuyan na siyang naglilingkod bilang accountant sa rural bank sa bayan. Si Maria ay sekretarya na, si Henia, ang kasama-sama kong naglalako ng kakanin ay nasa Baguio na at nag-aaral ng medisina. Ang isa ko pang kapatid na lalaking si Boy ay nasa Canada na pala at ang iba ko pang mga kapatid ay kasalukuyang nag-aaral sa mataas na paaralan.

Ipinagpaaral pala ni Itay ang perang ipinadadala ko, at ang iba ay ginamit sa pagmamanukan at pagbababuyan. Nagkatulong-tulong na iyon sa pag-aaral ng aking mga kapatid at pagpupundar ng magandang tahanan at mga kagamitan. Ayaw raw nilang mapahiya sa kung sakali at maisipan kong umuwi ng tahanan.

Hatinggabi na, marahil ay tulog na silang lahat, ngunit nananatili akong gising, nangingiti ako sa mga pangyayari. At naiisip kong kayganda ng bukas, may landas ang tagumpay, sa mga nagsisikap. May kaginhawahan sa pandayan ng karalitaan at kahirapan. At may umagang sumisilay pagkatapos ng takipsilim.

Dirty Politics

2021-06-30T07:46:00.001-07:00

by: "Yobeenoh"

"Madasalin" (2014) by Emmanuel “Manny” Garibay

Politics brings out the worst and the best in people.

A few years ago, my family decided to support an uncle, my mother first cousin, who wanted to run for mayor in our town. He didn't have much going for him. He wasn’t well known, neither was he rich. However, he carried a respected family name. My late grandfather was one of the best-loved mayors of our town. His surname was synonymous to kindhearted and competent leadership. Those who saw him run the town had nothing but praises for him. My grandfather carved a name for himself in our small town's history.

My uncle was counting on this when he ran against more affluent political rivals. So did we. He was a simple and gentle man. He had no vices. He had no bad record. He was squeaky clean. We thought he was the right man for the job, and of course he was a relative who had the same last name as our revered grandfather.

We helped him during the campaign. In our part of the town, we were the only ones who gave him unqualified support. Other people in the barangay either didn't know him or were supporting his rivals. But, we didn't give up although the whole barangay seemed against us. My father campaigned hard for him and he was able to convince many of his friends and relatives to vote for my uncle. Still he was expected to lose very badly to his rivals.

When the votes were counted, he garnered the second highest number of votes in our barangay. His good name carried him through some of the other barangays, mainly because my grandfather's supporters backed him. And my uncle won. It was the first time my family and I actively campaigned for somebody and it felt good to have helped him win. My uncle's first term went smoothly. He invited my father, a practicing lawyer, to be the municipal secretary. My father agreed and got his The first few years were all right. My father often complained that the appointment from the vice mayor.

Councilors belonging to the opposite camp treated him with disrespect because he was the mayor's ally, but he kept his ill feelings mostly to himself. Once I heard him say that he didn't study law at the University of the Philippines only to be pushed around by someone who bought his college diploma from the sidewalk at Recto. But he had to bear with all the inconveniences of politics because he wanted to help my uncle.

Then the next election came, and my uncle had an easier time winning reelection. We again campaigned for him and he won by a landslide. The Vice mayor belonged to his party and so did the majority of the councilors the two who soon defected to his party).

The entire municipal hall was now truly under my uncle's control, and he wasted no time in turning this to his advantage. He appointed his jobless younger brother as his security aide, and then things started to turn ugly. The mayor's newly-appointed security aide dipped his hands into funds he was not even supposed to handle. He disbursed the funds allocated for the Sangguniang Kabataan and the SK-related projects. Instead of the vice mayor, the mayor's security aide controlled the anti-drug campaign funds. And it didn't take long before he rebuilt his small house into a completely new multi-level house.

The mayor had his way at the municipal hall, while his younger brother had his way with the people's money. But since all the councilors belonged to the same party, no one questioned all the wrong things that were being done. Everyone wanted to be on good terms with the mayor, no one wanted court his disfavor. He was popular and being on his side meant a sure return to the municipal hall for another term.

Besides, the councilors were not the kind who were fond of reflecting issues. Most of them got elected because they looked good or they were “magaling makisama" or they just had many relatives in our small town. They were happy and contented with receiving their salaries without bothering to give their job a serious thought. One councilor even sponsored an ordinance requiring all dog owners to have their pets vaccinated by the municipal health officer. It seems he didn't know that's the job of a veterinarian, not a doctor. What could be more stupid than that?

My father tried to advise my uncle to correct some of these things. The mayor interpreted it as a personal attack on his capabilities as mayor. Though my uncle admitted he knew nothing about legal matters, he would brush aside my father's legal advice and insist on having his way. Power corrupts, and we witnessed it first-hand. My kind and gentle uncle was no more. In his place was a proud person-the same face, but not the same man with the same sincere heart.

The rest of our relatives on my mother's side continued to doubt that he could have changed so much. They said my uncle could never be what we picture him to be. They forgot that politics could bring out the worst in people, and it brought out the worst in my uncle.

It also brought out the worst in other people close to us. My mother's own brothers' and sisters would rather believe the word of their politician-cousin than the word of their sister and her lawyer-husband. They felt so honored and awed at having a relative for a mayor and they believed their cousin could do no wrong.

Politics also brought out the worst, of my friends. I had two friends in the SK movement. The SK president could have come to my father's defense when he was attacked, but he did nothing, thinking it would be politically costly against the mayor and his cohorts. The other one did something: he allied himself even more closely to the mayor and his brother and was rewarded with an appointment as the campaign coordinator in our barangay. Both were longtime friends of mine. Both knew my family well. But politics exposed them for what they really were: one a coward and the other a buffoon who didn't have the sense of delicadeza.

Politics, however, brought out the best in some of our relatives and friends who stood by us. Though the mayor continues to enjoy wide support, some relatives, neighbors and friends have come to our support in the hope that together, we can undo or at least make my uncle realize the errors of his administration. Politics might yet get out the best in him, just as it showed us who our true friends were. Politics might have reared its ugly face, but it also became a most enlightening experience for us. It showed us the good and the bad, the best and the worst in other people and in ourselves.

Katarungang Panlipunan

2021-06-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

ni: Manuel L. Quezon

"I Am Because We Are" (2021) by Jendee Sapo

Hindi maikakaila na ang Pilipinas ay nagkaroon ng malaking pagkakasulong maging sa mga suliranin pamayanan at maging sa suliranin ng pamumuhay sa loob ngbhuling tatlumpung taon. Sa pamamayan at pamamahala ay nakaabot tayo hanggangbsa tugatog nitong ating kalagayan— na halos taglay natin ang buong mga karapatan ng isang pamahalaang makasarili at sa ganito'y matitiyak na tuloy ang pagdating ng ganap na kasarinlan. Sa pangalakalan ng Estados Unidos, ang ating mga kalakal na panlabas at panloob ay nag-iibayo ang kalakhan—sa isang gabi, ang kayamanang bansa natin ay umunlad nang di-gaano lamang. Nakagawa tayo ng malaking pagkaunlad sa kalinisan, sa pagtuturo, at sa pagbubukas ng mga lansangan at lahat ng uri ng pahatiran at gumagamit na tayo ng mga pamamaraan at kasangkapang makabago sa pamumuhay. Ngunit ang karamihan sa nagtatamasa sa mga kaunlarang ito ay ang mga mayayaman o mga nakaririwasa lamang.

Ang mayayaman ay maaaring mabuhay sa gitna ng mga karangyaan. Ang ilan mga anak nila ay lumalaki sa layaw at kasaganaan, at ang kanilang pag-iisip ay nahuhubog mga ugaling walang minamahalaga kundi ang mga bagay na panlipunan, mga kasanayan, mga libangan, at iba pang mga mararangyang hilig ng katawan, anupa't nangahihirati sa kasanayan isang kabuhayang walang halaga, di-maibigan sa paggawa, at salat sa mga damdaming makatao. Ang mga nakaririwasa, na siyang panggitnang uring di-mayaman at di-mahirap, ay nagkaroon naman ngayon ng lagay ng pamumuhay na makapupong mataas kaysa noong panahon ng Espanyol. Ang mga anyayang pangangailangan ng kasalukuyang kabihasnan ay naabot na ng kanilang kaya at napagtatamasahan. Ang mga anak nilang lalaki't babae ay napakain ng mabuti, napararamitan-ng magara, napag-aaral ng magaling— laksa-laksa ang nagsisipag-aral sa lalong mataas na karunungan.

Nakalulungkot na sabihin, ngunit siyang katotohanan, na ang ganyang mga ginhawa ay walang-wala sa ating bayang manggagawa. Maging ang mga lalaki't babaeng ngayo'y nagsisigawa sa lupa, maging ang nagsisipasok sa mga pagawaan ay bahagya ng may ikinahihigit na kagaanan ng buhay sa kabuhayan na ng mga manggagawa noong panahon ng Espanyol. Tunay nga na ang mga pasahod o upahan ngayon ay lumaki kaysa sa mga bayaran noong tayo y nasa ilalim pa ng kapangyarihan ng Espanya, at ang kasahuran dito ngayo'y mataas kaysa umiiral sa alin mang bayan dito sa kasilangan, matangi sa Hapon. Datapwat dapat naman nating alalahaning sa isang salapi noong panahon ng Espanya ay maraming bagay o pangangailangang nabibili kaysa isang salapi ngayon at saka, sa pagsasamahan ng nagpapagawa at manggagawa nang mga panahong yaon, ang may isang uri ng pagpapalagayang makapupong mahal sa ganang isang kawani kaysa halaga ng salapi.

Noon, ang mga nagpapagawa at mga manggagawa ay nagkakalapitan na anupa't nagpapalagayan silang parang tunay na magmamagulang o magkakamag-anak, kaya nabibigkis ng buklod ng pamamahalang makapupong matibay kaysa tali ng salapi. Ngayon ang mga pagsasamahan nila'y tunay na sa mag-iibang tao, na walang kaanu- anumang buklod ng pagmamalasakit, gaya na rin ng pangyayari ng mga ibang lupaing ang pinaghaharian ng malalaking industriya. Ang ating mga ninuno naman, dala ng kanilang malaking kamangmangan, ay tikis na mga nasisiyahan sa mahirap nilang pamumuhay, paano'y may paninivwala silang ang gayong mga paghihirap ay bagay na di maiiwasan sa ibabaw ng lupa pagkat siyang tadhana ng Maykapal, na kailangang tiisin ng sinumang ibig magtamo ng gantimpala ng kalangitan.

Ngayon, ang manggagawang Pilipino, pagkahangal-hangal man, ay ayaw nang maniwalang kalooban ng Maykapal ang pangyayaring ilan sa kanyang mga nilikha'y mahusay sa kasaganaan at karangyaan, samantalang ang iba'y nabubuhay naman sa mga pagtitiis at karalitaan. Ang mga manggagawang Pilipino ngayo'y may paniniwalang siya'y minamahal din ng Ama ng sangkataunan katulad ng alin pa mang tao na Kanyang nilikha, at sa ganito'y hindi inawa ang daigaig upang pakinabangan lamang ng ilan, hindi upang magkaroon ng kabuhayang magpapaligaya sa lahat.

Ang pagpapaunlad ng bansa sa katarungang panlipunan ay tiyakang ipinag-utos ng Saligang-Batas natin. Ang ating palatuntunan, siyang palatuntunang tinanggap at pinanghawakan ng bayan sa pagkanalal sa inyo at sa akin man, ay nag-aatang sa atin ng mabigat na tungkuling lumikha at makapagpairal ng mga manggagawa. Dapat tayong magsikap, na sa alin mang batas na ating lalagaa ay nuwag magkaroon ng ano mano uri ng pagtutulot na ang mga magpapagawa ay, makapagsamantala sa kanilans mga manggagawa, at huwag payagan ang anomang palakad o pamamaraang sukat makabigo sa mga matuwid na layon ng katarungan. Sa pagpapatatag ng kapalaran ng bagong bansa nating ito ay dapat tayong manghawak na di-gaano sa landas ng batas, na gaya sa katibayan ng pagtatapat ng mamamayan sa kanyang pamahalaang ito na itinatag at pinairal nang dahil lamang sa adhikaing sila y para-parang matangkilik, at. sa kanilang ikalalaya at ikaliligaya.

Maging ang Kagawaran ng Katarungan at maging ang Kawanihan ng Paggawa ay kapwa nalalaang tumulong sa inyo sa paghahanda ng mga panukalang batas at kapasiyahang sukat makita sa mga batas na kasalukuyang umiiral, at nang sa ganito'y maisasaayos at malunasan ang mga katiwalian at kaapihang nananaig pa sa bayan, at upang matupad din naming mahusay ang mga simulain ukol sa suliraning ito'y itinatadhana ng ating Saligang-Batas at gayon din ang mga pangako nating nasasaad sa ating palatuntunang pamahalaan.

What is Youth

2021-06-30T07:17:00.003-07:00

by: Ibrahim Jubaira

"Requiem for the City Lights" (2020) by Mark Jim Ibus

Some nights back, my oldest boy was reading aloud a poem entitled, “To the Filipino Youth" with passable accent and enunciation. When he got through he turned to me and said that he knew what it is to be a Filipino, but what is youth? I thought a while and then said: Youth is the grey imperceptible dawn that precipitates morning: the wet foggy mountainsides and misty hilltops, the sparkling dew on the grass, the wild untrimmed vegetation of life, its carefree undergrowth. Youth is the virgin morning, the seedtime of life; it's the fresh immaculate clouds, the dazzling expanding sun, the cool silvery moon upon which a child's delight is focused with wonder and fascination. It's the vigorous winds, the falling rains, the cascading flow of newly found rivers; it's the shore of life. That is youth, partly youth. But youth, I told my boy, is more than that.

Youth is the first dance you have had, the first stealthy date, the first nervous kiss. It's passions burning like fire. It's holding hands in a semi-private room and talking with your eyes, because mere words have miserably failed. It's tossing in bed, remembering stolen scenes and sleepless nights. It's the first reluctant parting between young lovers. It's possessiveness and jealousy and petty quarrels. But all this, I told my boy, is just a small part of youth.

Youth at times is the shuffling feet of a girl, her whimpers and cries, her endless complaints. It's a boy's fistfights and black eyes in the classroom one moment and then his unequivocal friendship the next. It's scrawls and chalk marks on the walls, the crude writings and drawings on the board; it's a pencil constantly licked by an innocent moist tongue. It's pigtails and fancy ribbons. It's the anxious hand fingering the book, the eyes focused on the board, an eager ear to catch the word. That is youth, partly youth. But then, I told my boy, youth is more than that.

Youth is the ever-questioning boy who has not yet caught the meaning of the world, who is confused by the intricate pattern of life. It's a boy rubbing his eyes, raising his voice to ask: What is beyond that mountain, moon, the sun, and the stars? God could not be sufficient answer, because who made God then? And you ask him to be quiet. Youth then is curiosity and sober thoughts. It's a child hungering for knowledge, because it has not acquired any yet. All this is partly youth. But youth, I told my boy, is more than that.

Youth is a child at play. It's rich laughter in the rain and vigorous running in the sunlight. It's also a child's broken ankle or a lost coin. It's candy and rubber bands and other little things in the child's pockets. At other times it's a child's dirty face. But all this again, I told my boy, is just a small element of youth.

Youth then is a boy or girl laughing and crying on the face of this earth. It's bicycle and bus rides and movies and hitchhiking and reckless, aimless wanderings. It's a robust boy drinking the sweet water of this earth, hugging the sweetness of life, lamenting nothing, because life for youth is more laughter, while heartaches and real sorrows and responsibilities belong to another age, another time, another season.

Now I turned to my boy and asked him if he understood what I was talking about. It was beautiful, he said, more beautiful than his poem. But, he remarked, some parts about mountainsides and the sparking dew or something were a bit confusing. Correct, I told him. Confusion is part of youth. I told him to grow up and he'd understand. Grow up? Yes, I said. Growth is also part of youth. And now would the boy please go to bed?

Ang Musika ng mga Tunog

2021-06-30T07:17:00.002-07:00

ni: Emilia Y. Basco

"I Have a Dream" (2020) by Jason Ray Zabat

Ang musika ay wika ng mga tunog. Ang unang katanungan, ang masasaisip ng tao saan nagmula o ano ang pinagbatayan ng pagkakaroon ng wika ng mga tunog? Paanong ang tunog na ito ay naging musika sa atin ngayons Magbalik tayo sa kasaysayan ni Adan sa Paraiso nang likhain siya ng Diyos. Sa kanyang pag-iisa ang mga ingay o tinig na kanyang narinig ay naging tunog ng wika. Dahil sa pagkakaroon ng tunog, ang wika may ritmong tono ang siyang naging musika kay Adan. Ang kaalaman ni Adan a musika ay lumawak sa mga bagay, mula sa nuni at awit ng mga ibon, boses ng mga hayop, indayog ng mga sanga, at pagaspas ng dahon ng mga kahoy. Ang mga huni ng maliliit na kulisap at iba pang hayop sa lupa ay nakalikha ng musika lalo na pagsapit ng gabi. Ang pagsasabay-sabay ng mga tinig ng mga ito, o, maging ang tinig nila ay nahina, o malambing ay nakalilikha ng simponik aksent na siyang pandaigdig. Pagkalipas ng panahon, ang mga tao ng kalikasan (World Natural Orchestra). Pag malakas, ma sa kagubatan ay nakalikha rin ng sinaunang tambol (primetive drums). Dito nagmula pagkakaroon ng magaspang na pagsasayaw ang mga lalaki't babae. Nahikayat silang umindak sa tunog ng gong at tambol.

Ang musika ay di nalikha para sa tao lamang, mababang uri man ng hayop ay tumutugon din sa diwang musika. Halimbawa, ang mga ahas na alaga sa India at Arabia ay nagtatayo ng ulo kapag nakarinig ng tunog ng pluta ng fakiir (isang pulubing panrelihiyon na may bandolina). Sa Heolcah, Florida, U.S.A., sa isang pagatasan, ang mga baka sa pook-gatasan habang nakakabit ang mga instrumento o gadget sa mga suso nito ay may radyong nagbibigay ng musika. Ayon sa manedyer ng pagatasan, ang mga ito'y nakatutulong sa pagkuha ng maraming-gatas. Ayon sa manedyer ng pagatasan, ang mga ito'y edukadong baka.

Ang sangkatauhan ay tumanda, dumunong, at lalong nagkaroon ng kamalayan sa musika. Ang mga di-linang na musika at mga sayaw ng mga nakaraang panahon ay pinag-ukulan ngayon ng panahon at nilagyan ng mga pagbabago at bagong interpretasyon. Sa Pilipinas, halimbawa, ang sayaw at musika ng mga Muslim ay nabigyan ng makabagong interpretasyon. Nakilala ang kanilang mga tugtugin at sayaw sa buong bansa at sa ibang bansa man sa pamamagitan ng Tropa Bayanihan (Bayanihan Troupe).

Ang musikang Magindanaw ay kilalang musikang Asyano. May impluwensiya o may kaugnayan ito sa musika ng Malaya, Hindu, at Muslim. Nagbago rin ng tanghalan ang mga katutubong sayaw mula sa bahay ng mga datu tungo sa tiyak na pook na tanghalan. Dati'y itinatanghal lamang kung may pagdiriwang ang mga Muslim, kung may mga panauhin ang datu, o kung may kasalan. Sa ngayon, ang bagong ensembol ay ginagawang pampalipas ng oras o pang-aliw.

Ayon sa isang kritikong si Gerald Frank, isang Amerikano, "magpahayag ka ukol sa musika at ikaw ay magsasabi ng ukol sa walang hanggang hiwaga, ang hiwaga ng mga tunog". Na ang tao ay nakalikha ng iba't ibang instrumento upang ipahayag ang tunog ng wika mula sa tambol, kuwerdas, at sa ngayon ay naging radyopono, esteryo, teyp rekorder, plaka, at telebisyon, ay di naging kataka-taka o kahanga-hanga. Lahat ito'y natuklasan para sa musika.

Isa pang pagpapatunay ng lakas o bisa ng musika ay noong mga panahong si Nero ng Roma ay nag-aaliw samantalang nasusunog ang Roma. Sinasabi ring napababa ni Sta. Cecilia ang mga anghel sa kanyang pagtugtog. Ang pusong may suliranin ay napagagaan ng musika. Kung ang isa'y nakikinig ng musika, mapapansin bumibilis ang tibok ng kanyang puso at isang daliri'y napapakumpas, samantalang ang isipan nama'y nakikipag-unahan sa daloy ng musika. Isang halimbawa pa ng bisa ng musika ay ang paghiling ng isang bilanggong papatayin sa kinabukasan ng musika sa halip na pagkain. Noong ika-17 dantaon, si Amer Farouzi, hari ng Persia ay hindi na mapagaling ng kanilang mga manggagamot, sa biyulin ng isang pulubi'y himalang gumaling, naging mabisang gamot ang wika ng mga tunog.

Makapangyarihan ang musika hindi lamang sa indibidwal kundi sa mga gawain at pagdiriwang. Masasabing masira man ang mga bagay sa daigdig o magunaw man yata ang mundo hindi mawawala sa puso ng mga tao ang musika. Ayon sa isang dalubhasa sa musika, ang musika'y isang sining na nagpapahayag ng isang bukod tanging kakayahan ng makarealistikong indibidwal o grupo.

Trap

2021-06-30T07:14:00.001-07:00

by: Kerima Polotan Tuvera

"Pagmaya" (2021) by Hannah Castalone

I was fourteen when we moved to Cabuyao. We reached the town at night and though it was not quite seven, the streets were empty. I had hoped we would get to it before dark, while there was light enough for people to see us come. We knew no one, of course,-- “We'll make friends," my father had said-- and expected no welcome, but having left Tayug with reluctance, I had urged my father during the trip to drive faster so that we might arrive in Cabuyao early enough for someone to see us drive in.

That was important to me.

"Why, Elisa?" my mother asked, and I could not tell her why, except that I had left behind in Tayug one friend very dear to me. When the day came for us to go, we could not leave soon enough. I wanted the pain of missing Salud to start quickly. She said good-bye to me that morning by the plaza, asking, "Are you taking everything, Elisa? You're sure?" When Mother frowned, I hated Salud for betraying me.

Several times that past year I had told Salud I felt that something was happening to me. I felt I was growing to be another person entirely. "Something’ wrong, Salud," I said one day-"I'm going crazy." She had laughed and looked pointedly at my breasts and said, "They're growing, like mine, Elisa." She had a way of saying things like that, that angered and also disarmed me; she was l18 and the four years between us yawned like an abyss. During all that time I had watched her turn into a lovely, graceful girl, unfazed by adolescence, leaving me far behind, eaten with envy and yearning. When she laughed at me that morning I refused to be shaken off. I dogged her all the way along Calle Santa, around the corner to Del Pilar, and catching up with her a few coconut trees from their steps, I said something that made her pull up and look at me gravely. "Help me, Salud," I said.

That past September I had come home one Monday from school, my dress with a stain. Since then, I had lived with the terrible feeling that I stood on the brink of something. I had dreams about this too, unhappy, frightened nights when my dreams took me to an unknown precipice, and I watched helplessly as my body dropped over the edge.

It was of this that Salud spoke when she asked, that morning we got ready to drive away, if I was leaving something behind with her. Some books I had given her, and tears, and a girlish promise I would write faithfully. She stood beside the car, saying "Goodbye" over and over; she would not cry before me. Her eyes, though bright, were dry. I held her arms tightly, wanting to see her tears, but my father said, "All right, all right," and I let her go. She blew her fingers at me and we drove away.

We live near the church, I wrote Salud, in a house that is all sawali, except for the roof which is nipa, and the floor which is bamboo. The toilet is at the back, outside the house. It is an outhouse set on posts are connected to the kitchen by a bamboo bridge. You will not believe me but the bridge is the part I like best-it swings when I walk on it. There are sugar cane stalks on both sides of the bridge and I never hurry to the outhouse. It is beautiful when there is a moon up.

I believe you, Elisa, Salud wrote back. But don't jump off.

The first day I resumed schooling, my father came with me. We saw the principal together. She was an elderly spinster who wore tight rimless glasses on her nose. She rarely smiled and when she did, it was to show big false teeth that clicked noisily when she spoke-"How old are you, Elisa?" she asked. "Fourteen," I replied, respectfully. "Only?" she remarked, and it was the wrong thing to say. I had scrubbed myself that day and put on my best dress but at Miss Ramos' remark, I felt my knees grow rough and dark, my breast starts to swell. I wondered if she knew about my new condition. My days were full of bodily pain and a mysterious sense of growing; I moved about carefully, waiting for some bit of womanly knowledge to dawn on me, a grace, a manner of self but I fumbled as before and dropped things and was miserable before people. Only the unnerving dreams persisted, the nightly journeys that took me through the labyrinths of my mind to emerge always on the sharp rim of some mountainside from which I flung myself even as I called for help.

Miss Ramos stood up, took me by the hand, not companionably, not with palm about my wrist, but with index finger and thumb, with clear distaste, and led me thus, a sullen specimen, through the corridors of the school, and without bothering to knock, pushed me ahead, through a door marked Mr. Gabriel, and said, "Mr. Gabriel, this is Elisa."

Miss Ramos is a witch, I wrote Salud. When she's around, she gives off a smell that makes me sick.

Everyone smells, Saud replied, but you will smell most of all, Elisa, (If you don't stop hating people.)

Not everyone, I wrote back. I like Mr. Gabriel. He is a good man. Mr. Gabriel was Small and thin and stooped, with a way about him that made him seem even smaller. His eyes laughed even when his mouth did not, and when that happened, the tenderness spilled down the cheeks to his quiet lips. When Miss Ramos blazed into his room, demanding forms and reports and C-156's, Mr. Gabriel met the storm with soothing coolness, as though he dealt with just another wayward student.

One day, we were weeding the grounds when I swung my scythe and hit my leg instead. I stood bleeding, watching the red fluid flow down to the soil, stain it momentarily, then sink and disappear, leaving nothing but a wet spot. Miss Ramos walked up to me, smiling thinly. She said, "Why, it's only blood." Mr. Gabriel took me to the clinic. He stopped before the door, fumbling through his pockets for the key. A dark flush had spread over his face and neck. Inside the clinic, I sat on the stool while Mr. Gabriel opened a window. He took a long time searching for swab and iodine and bandage but when he sat in front of me, the flush had disappeared from his face. It was not a deep wound, but it was ugly. The tip of the scythe had drawn a gash across my leg, leaving a piece of flesh dangling by a thread of skin. Mr. Gabriel washed and bound it. Except for some throbbing, it had ceased to hurt me. I said so as we left the room-"It's not painful," I said wonderingly. "It will return later," he said.

I followed him out of the room. The yard was empty; the other children had left. A frown passed over his face. He hurried down the steps and sloshed through the mud, his shoes squeezing down on the wet soil. Bits of clay clung to the cuffs of his pants. It was a brown suit he wore. I had seen it on him several times before. It was loose and it fitted him badly. As he walked, the back of his coat swished about his thighs. In the light of early evening, he was a weird sight, like an earthbound ghost hurrying through the countryside. I trotted after him. When we reached the fork, he raised his hand quickly and disappeared in the twilight.

We had begun to write themes again and I looked for words like agony and happiness and soul. Each time I used such word, a bell seemed to ring inside me. One morning when Mr. Gabriel read one of my themes in front of the class, I sat still, trying to recall my feelings as I wrote it. But it was no use, something was gone. Perhaps, it was Mr. Gabriel's voice: it was soft and low, like a woman's, and I kept thinking: I wish I could talk to him alone. Perhaps, it was the memory of what I had written about-a white, long-legged bird skimming the rice fields while I stood on the shoulder of the road watching, the great sky above me.

If Mr. Gabriel had seemed amused, I might have hated him. But he smiled faintly and looked away, and then as gently as that, between one heartbeat and another, I fell in love with him.

I did not write to Salud about it, I was certain her answer would come, underlined with mock worry: Yes, But is he in love with you, and if he is, is he a married man, and if he isn't, will he marry you?

I betrayed myself in a hundred ways.

When Mr. Gabriel stood beside me in a class, watching while I wrote a theme, his presence would undo me all so completely that my mind would go blank, and I would ask to be excused. Outside, I crawled beneath the school building, where it was damp and I could be alone, but as soon as class was over, I lingered by the door of the teacher’s room, compelled to stay by a new, frightening necessity.

One day, he surprised me beneath the building. He had gone to look for the boys who had disappeared as soon as the gardening assignments were posted on the board. He looked under the schoolhouse and saw me on the ground, hugging my legs together. "Elisa?" he called. "Mr. Gabriel. "I replied. "Come out, he said. I crawled to where he waited by the hedges. "Were you hiding?" he asked. I stood mute. I felt that if I began to explain I would say more than I should, I would in an on rush of hope tell him everything— Salud and my dreams and the sense of sin that possessed me because I had begun, despite myself, to span with aching arms the emptiness of my youthful bed at night. For one instant, I could have, but someone came to ask for a hoe, and Mr. Gabriel handed me a trowel and I headed for my garden plot.

In February that year, I fell ill. On the fifth day of my illness, a friend passed by the house and left a note. How do you do, Elisa? it read. Are you better? Hurry up and come back to us, we miss you. Sincerely, Leonor. Then, P.S. What is wrong?

It was the postscript that completed my betrayal— Leonor's girlish prescience. In my handwriting, I replied to that question. I wrote: I love Mr. Gabriel. I trembled as I wrote the words. Dimly, I realized I had identified the precipice at last. I had met the forlorn stranger in my dreams, face to face, no longer would she go wandering tremulously on mountaintops, dying her lonely deaths, she was where I sat in my sick clothes, writing the fateful words that accepted the knowledge of womanhood.

When I returned to school the next Monday, it was all over the place. The damning note made the rounds and reached Miss Ramos, before whom I now stood, awaiting judgment. The principal smiled that grim smile of hers and said, "A costly mistake. A very costly one. You have involved Mr. Gabriel in gossip that may mean his job." I said nothing accepting suspension.

When I returned to my room, I saw that on the blackboard someone had written, "Elisa Gabriel. "I picked up my things and left. I took the long road, the one that led past the market and the billiard hall, past the empty south lots, around the graveyard, then I cut across the plaza and headed for home. But on the porch of our home, I had no sooner put my books down than I turned around this time. I ran so fast that my heart rose to my throat aid beat there, heavy strokes that made breathing difficult. To my right, the river lay, untouched by the panic that led me to the building on top of the hill. It was dark when I stumbled into Mr. Gabriel's room and found him, not bleeding and helpless and dying, but seated at his desk: Correcting papers. We frightened each other, I think, because his jaw dropped, and at the sight of him, I missed a step and fell to my knees, and there on the floor, in that grotesque, unintended curtsey, the words were wrung from me. "Mr. Gabriel. Sir, I love you." I never found out if he went to my father about this, or even told Miss Ramos, but I can see myself he dusk of that room years ago, in that absurd posture, alone with the strange gentleman to whom I had lost my young heart. For what waited forever, Mr. Gabriel did not move until I stood up and, in my shame, burst into tears. Then he approached me and led me to the door. The wind had picked up a mournful sound like the far-off despairing wail of an animal caught in some trap, and now it reached us both where we stood in the deserted corridor of the school. "Run home, Elisa," he said. "Run home."

The Eye of the Needle

2021-06-30T07:09:00.004-07:00

by: Gilda Cordero-Fernando

"Kaibigan" (2017) by Ronna Manansala

When I was a little girl and in school, we all had a very strong sense of sin. If you so much as borrowed a Crayola without permission, you could feel God the Father's eye in its triangle above the blackboard following your every move till you put it back. We avoided "occasions of sin" like standing before the virtues— humility, fortitude, sin" like standing before the mirror too long, and going to moles with kissing scenes, and we practiced all the temperance, and chastity. We were always very careful not to lie and motto steal, not to commit adultery and not to kill. I didn't know exactly what chastity meant but it has something to do with having your skirt two inches below the knees and minding the way you sat— legs uncrossed, knees together, and not a wisp of underwear showing, because such carelessness, we had painfully been made to understand, was a grievous sin. We were Grade Four and whatever the nuns said was the law —you obeyed or went to hell, it was as simple as that.

At one minute to seven, Madame Ludmilla stood in the gray light of the drafty Assembly Hall, and we were expected to fall in line, throw away our bubble gums, stop fidgeting and sweating. Madame Ludmilla was a cold Teutonic nun with a face as cheerless as a chopping board. No morsel of love ever fell from the tight zipper of her mouth. She could swoop down from her perch on the teacher's platform and shake the living daylights out of you. She could leave you crucified against the blackboard with a dictionary on either palm. With the end of her long pointer, she had a way of flicking an offensive bow off a pigtail or a flower off a collar. She was bleak and righteous and pure and germless.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," Madame Ludmilla was fond of intoning, "for they shall possess the kingdom of heaven." And our eyes automatically strayed to where Socorro sat in her mended uniform, scratching a scab off her ankle. We, the children of the privileged, who rode flashy cars to school, who had money to waste on candy that rots the teeth and forgot to turn off the tap in the lavatory, we had as much chance of entering that kingdom as of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. And as we bowed our heads in sorrow and shame, Madame Ludmilla walked swiftly down the aisle to collect our recess money for the father of Socorro who was dying of T.B. in a charity ward.

I rode to school with Father who had no sense of time and consequently was always late in the mornings. He took an eternity to shave and to choose his tie while I waited in the car and honked and honked and honked. It was all right for Father. He only went to the courthouse. He wouldn’t have to feel the pointer at his back propelling him to a corner or have to tell in front of the class (stuttering and crying while everyone tittered—why he was late again: "Because my father Madame." I was "Miss Because-My-Father", the world's champion late comer, and Madame Ludmilla sucked in her breath and began the moral about the man who was too late to meet St. Peter.

Sometimes if Madame Ludmilla was busy at the blackboard (she liked to write and to draw maps could sneak in late without being noticed. That is unless Socorro, who sat behind me, was in a holy mood and told. Socorro was a large simpering girl with chopped bangs and a cough in her voice, and she was Madame Ludmilla's spy. She was forever hiding behind doors to see who talked or read comic books or wore colored socks. Upon my back, she heaped endless indignities –flicking my braids like horse reins or dipping the ends of them in her horrid sea-green ink. I can still see the plump red meat of her tongue lolling wetly between the white fence of her teeth. I hated and feared her most as much as I did our teacher, but we were doomed to each other's company, bound alphabetically together by our surnames (which both began with C) and I endured my appointed desk before this bully, who remorselessly controlled me by the docile ends of my braids.

We used to wait for our cars at five p.m. on an open porch in front of Home Economics. No one ever fetched Socorro but she always sort of stood around hoping someone would give her a lift home. Sometimes we played jackstones. You could stand at the top of the stairs and look down to the Maypole, over the drinking fountains and the cluster of glider swings where the collegiate sat gossiping, and clear down to the curve of mossy convent wall which enclosed the nuns' vegetable garden.

I remember it was a particularly windy day and I stood at the top of the stairs holding on to my school bag. Suddenly a big wind came swooshing over the playground, lifting my skirt up like an inverted parachute, ballooning it up and over my red-hot ears. Desperately struggled to keep my skirt down, but for what seemed an eternity I was exposed to merciless view-my knobby knees, my thighs, my cotton panties.

The moment I had control of the situation, I looked quickly around to see if anyone had witnessed my humiliation and met Socorro's eyes twinkling mischievously over the rim of a melting popsicle.

Ï saw!' Socorro chanted, making all sorts of horrid faces, covering her eyes with her stubby-nailed fingers and peeking through them. "I saw, I saw and I'm going to tell."

"It wasn't my fault!" I cried, “You know it wasn't my fault"

"What a mortal sin!" laughed Socorro. What a great enormous, seditious mortal sin!"

"You're not going to tell, are you? I asked anxiously, "Madame would think I was careless on purpose.

Socorro nodded her head with enthusiasm. "Boy, if there's anything Madame hates it's immodesty."

“Please, Socorro," I begged. "she already hates me —if you tell her—"

"Boy! I bet you'd get locked up in the broom closet. You heard about that girl Madame locked up there last year and forgot? Boy, they had to bring her out on a stretcher! She was black and blue. She was green and white. Oh boy, what if they expel your

"Who cares?" I made a face and looked away.

"You said that! Remember you said that, too. Who cares! Oh boy!"

Just then the car came sweeping down the driveway and I had to go home.

Perhaps if there had been no Madame Ludmilla, or if she were more like the kinder teachers of the succeeding grades, Socorro would not have been such an ominous figure in my memory. A trifle rougher, a bit bossier than the others maybe, but someone you dismiss in adulthood with a sigh and even a little pity. Perhaps you'd bump into her twenty years later, carrying a market basket, with a brat squalling at her skirt, and she'd have lost her menacing qualities-she'd be just an old schoolmate you couldn't immediately place, but were quickly glad note hadn't got on in life any better than you. But there was a Madame Ludmilla, spewing righteousness and brimstone, they complemented each other like hook and eye— and the nun's bigotry brought to the surface Socorro's subtler qualities.

The next day I tried to talk to Socorro but she refused to answer and turned her back on me. But I could sense from the square of her shoulders and the giggle convulsed in her cheek that she was still going to tell. I didn't say a word when she knotted my braids and stuck a paper flag into them. I didn't flinch when she dipped the ends them in her sea-green ink. During Geography l caught a glimpse of Socorro drawing something on her pad. I saw her write my name at the bottom of it and then it dawned on me that she and drawn the figure of a girl with her skirt flying up. The paper made its way down the second row and the girls held on to their bellies in silent mirth. By recess time the drawing had made its way back to Socorro and I tried to grab it but she was too quick; she danced away, waving it above my head.

I wanted to walk away, to the others at handball, but I didn’t dare lose sight of Socorro. I sat on a stone bench and unwrapped my sandwich. At my back I could feel Socorro Dench and unwrapped my watching me unravel the paper napkin with interest. What have you watching got in it?" me unravel she asked, the throwing the crumpled drawing into the gutter among the dead leaves. "Want to swap with mine?"

Dumbly, I handed my neatly-trimmed ham sandwich over to the enemy. Socorro always had one of those hard buns you get from the Chinese store at two a centavo and it always had margarine and brown sugar in it. Bitterly, I sank my teeth into the hard brown bread.

"Go buy me a soft drink to go with it," said Socorro, licking her fingers greedily. I ran to the canteen.

Socorro didn't tell Madame Ludmilla after recess either and at five o'clock I gave her a lift home.

“You're really confusing me,” said Socorro the next day as we stood in the Assembly Hall waiting for Madame Ludmilla to collect our library books. "You know it’s my duty to tell. After all you were immodest beyond words."

"But you mustn’t," I begged. I don't know what she'd do."

"I shudder to think about it," Socorro said, riffling in her grimy basket of books. "Boy. I'm all out of pad paper. Lend me ten centavos, will you?"

In the middle of the week Socorro borrowed my fountain pen, a nice new Waterman I had gotten for my birthday, and never returned it. I don't know whether she did it on purpose or merely forgot that it was mine because she used it in class constantly. Each day she also borrowed ten centavos on some pretext or another, and she was still going to tell Madame Ludmilla. I was beginning to learn that there are two kinds of people in the world: the pushers and the pushed, and it wasn't very hard to see where I belonged. I suffered my scratchy old pen, hating myself but never daring to say a word.

If Socorro wandered away for ten minutes I broke out in a nervous sweat and bit my thumbnail to ribbons. Once I had to go to the canteen for a notebook and when I got back I saw her talking to Madame Ludmilla. Afterwards I asked Socorro what they had talked about and she shrugged her shoulders and walked away. I followed her. She had gotten a gold star for Arithmetic that morning and I told her she was the best darned mathematician in the Philippines. Socorro picked up a ball from under the swing and started to bounce it against a wall. When it bounced out of her grasp, I ran to retrieve it. "When I grow up," Socorro said, "I’ll be a businesswoman and own a big dry goods store. Like my uncle. He's got a refrigerator and a radio and everything. They have pancakes for breakfast every day." The ball rolled away. I scurried after it. "And you know what you'll be?" she looked down at me continuously. "You're going to be some weepy artist and write about your aches against the world."

After a while she threw the ball across the playground and sat down on a bench and I sat down too. She pinched the pus off a sore on her knee and winced. "Say, have you got that red thing you put on wounds?

So when the car came I took her home with me to put Mercurochrome on her wound. "Did you tell Madame Ludmilla?" I asked at last.

“Quit pestering me, will you?" she said. We went to my room and sat on the bed and then she lay down for a while because she said she liked the feel of the quilted cover. Then we played monkey-monkey but it was no fun at all because Socorro was always cheating. I showed her my Shirley Temple album. She messed around with my box of hairbands and tried on some or them. She was particularly impressed by the pair of pearl earrings I used for special occasions which my uncle had sent me from Japan.

Once I failed to give Socorro my daily allowance and she threatened to go straight to Madame Ludmilla till I promised to give her thirty centavos the following day. "Maybe I don't even have to tell Madame Ludmilla about your mortal sin," she said. “Maybe she already knows.”

“Then how come she hasn't called me or anything yet.”

"She's like Dick Tracy-you know- -suspense and all that." She laughed and dug me with her elbow because Madame Ludmilla was walking by just then with an armload of confiscated comics.

"You must realize what a big favor I'm doing you," said Socorro. "Because I commit a mortal sin too by delaying, and what thanks do I get? You don't care for me at all, so why should I worry about you?"

"You must never tell, Socorro," I said anxiously. "Haven't I always done what you told me?"

“Pooh," said Socorro, "you even miss out on a measly ten centavos."

“I promised to give you thirty tomorrow.

“Besides, I'm getting tired of your ham sandwich."

"I can tell them to put cheese—"

You don’t give a hoot. You bother with me only because you're scared."

"But I do. You're my best friend now, you know that."

"Honest?"

"Cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die."

"And you'd give me anything in the world I ask?"

"Anything"

"Oh, skip it. You couldn't give me what I really want."

"Why not?"

"Because you're a 'fraidy cat, that's why. You're scared of your mother. "

"No, I'm not."

Socorro's voice dropped to a low wheedle. "Then give me your pearl earrings," she said. "And I’ll never tell." I stared at her in horror. "Not my earrings! Mother would--"I thought so," said Socorro, kicking the cross-bar of the see-saw angrily. "I should have known. So from tomorrow on, no more skeleton in my closet." She flounced away.

Wait--" I called faintly, but Socorro had already crossed the street.

I don't know why I never told my parents about Socorro, but I think I was afraid they'd make a big fuss and I'd be in an even worse fix. Mother liked scenes. I remember what a big fuss she created in Grade II when I was made a mushroom in the school play when everyone else was a fairy or at least an elf. Mama stormed into the classroom and asked Madame Alice why wasn’t I a fairy or an elf. "A mushroom!” she snorted at the little nun's face. Imagine— a mushroom!" I could just see Mother barging into Grade IV and shaking Socorro till her teeth rattled. I could just see her giving Made Ludmilla a piece of her mind. Madame Ludmilla wasn't the sort you gave a piece of your mind to. Vengeance would fall like the walls of Babylon upon my head. I would be the butt of the pointer, the target for her barbed jokes. Why, she would surely pin my skirts up to my blouse and make me walk around the playground with a placard.

The following day Socorro pocketed my thirty centavos and walked away without saying a word. She was also getting meaner. During volleyball she tripped me, and I pitched forward against the net. She told the girls I had a crazy uncle in Japan. She rolled my Waterman over her desk and kicked it under my chair. In the corridor, at dismissal, I overheard her tell Madame Ludmilla she wanted to talk to her about a shameful matter concerning one of the girls. I stood outside the door, cold with fright, and heard Madame answer that she'd see Socorro first thing next morning.

So at recess time I told Socorro I had decided to give her my earrings. "Then see that you bring them tomorrow without fail," she said, "because I'm sick to death of you and I'll never give you a chance again."

What would I tell Mother? That I wanted to wear my earrings to school and then that I had lost them? That they were sucked down the drain of the bathtub? That a bad man took them from me at the school gate?

Carefully, I tiptoed into the bedroom where Mama was taking a nap on the double bed. I knew exactly where the earrings were, tucked in a blue velvet box in the top drawer of her dresser. Softly, I turned the tiny key hanging from its lock.

"What on earth are you looking for?" Mother's annoyed voice called from the tumbled pillows.

"I-I was hunting for-for a pencil."

"Well that's not the place for pencils. Go ask Clara. Or Daddy. Anybody. Shoo!"

I ran out of the room.

The next morning, as soon as I had alighted from the car, Socorro beckoned me to the lavatory. She bolted the door and leaned against it.

"Well," she said eagerly. "Give them to me."

“I wasn't able to get them," I said, "but I'm sure to give them to you tomorrow."

"Why, you double-crosser!" Socorro's face shaped itself into an ugly scowl.

"I almost had them but then Mother-

"I should have known. Honestly, I don't know what to do with you any more! Now I’ll be forced to keep that appointment with Madame Ludmilla."

"Don't be mad, Socorro," I said. "It's only until tomorrow. Here I fumbled in my pocket, "I’ve got a St. Christopher medal—its new— you can have it if you want it."

Socorro snatched the medal from my hand, threw it contemptuously into the toilet bowl and flushed it down. The sound of the rushing water echoed in my ears. Her eyes suspiciously rimmed with red. "I’m so sick of you I could retch!"

The bell rang. "Please, Socorro," I begged, clutching her sleeve in fright. "Tomorrow morning...If you don't have it by then you can go to Madame and I won't even try to stop you. I'll surely have it by then."

Socorro pushed me roughly against the washbasin. "All right," she said wearily. "Tomorrow at eight a.m. But if you double-cross me again you'll really get it from Madame Ludmilla and from me." She walked out of the lavatory, banging the door after her.

Mother was playing on the piano when I arrived home. I brushed a kiss on her cheek and went swift past to the bedroom. Slowly, I pulled opened the top drawer of the dresser. Mother's fancy combs and brooches, her fans and her veils were there, but the little blue box wasn't! Feverishly, I rummaged through the other drawers but the earrings weren’t in any of them either.

I walked to the sala and sat on the edge of the rattan armchair. Mother looked up from the piano, "Aren't you dressed yet?" she called over her shoulder. "We're having an early supper because Papa promised to take you to the circus, remember?”

The circus! It had come to town the week before and most of the girls had already gone to see it and in school no one talked about anything else. Mother didn't usually approve of circuses ("It's dusty and all the children who go have colds and what if the tent collapses?") but there it was right in my lap-elephants and lions and clowns and all, and I couldn't even be happy about it.

Over our early supper I asked casually, "Where are my pearl earrings, Mama? I want to wear them."

"What for? It's only a circus."

"It's a big occasion for me. "I grinned, trying to swallow a mouthful of mashed potato.

"You can wear them some other time," said Mother. "I’ve sent them to the jeweler for cleaning. They'll be back in a week or two."

There is something very sad even about elephants. When you sit in the gallery all you see is the glorious spectacle—the pachyderms with their bells and bright saddles going through the ritual of their slow dance with confettis of light spraying over them. But when you are in the privileged seats, close to ringside, you don't miss a thing. The trainers' sticks are tipped with steel hooks and as they goad the lumbering beasts you notice that their rumps, especially those of the younger ones, are full of healed hook marks. I hugged the folding seat and cried for the baby elephants. Silly1" Mother scolded, and Father laughed out loud.

I couldn't sleep that night. I wanted to crawl under the covers and die. There was a mass murder of elephants under my bed and Socorro’s laughter hung like a steel hook from the ceiling. I went to the bathroom and leaned over the tub and tickled my throat, hoping I'd get sick or something. At five o'clock the sun sets, shining fiercely over the fence of brilliant bougainvillea.

The bell had already rung when I got to school, but on Fridays Father Charlie took over the religion class and he couldn't keep track of who was late because he had one glass eye. Quickly, I looked through the door and saw that Socorro not yet arrived.

After a while, a pair of girls Sneaked in through a side door and I crossed my fingers hard. Surely, Surely, one of them would be Socorro but neither was.

Father Charlie, the chaplain, was talking about the fires of hell. He drew three pancakes on the blackboard. The first he surrounded with shining rays because it was the Soul in the State of Sanctifying Grace. The second he covered with spots because it was the Soul in Venial Sin. The last he shaded all over because it was the Soul in Mortal Sin. The period was almost over. I glanced over my shoulder and still Socorro's seat behind me was empty. She had never been that late before. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she was even going to be absent!

Then the period was over. Father Charlie shuffled out of the room, and everyone started talking all at once until Madame Ludmilla's shadow darkened the threshold.

Madame came into the room and laid her books carefully on the edge of the table. At the back of the room a couple of girls were whispering together, but she did not scold them as she always did. Her face was drawn and pale as if she had been crying or something.

"Children," she said gravely, "I have an announcement to make. There has been a tragedy amongst us. Yesterday afternoon, while crossing the street in front of our school, Socorro was run over by a speeding automobile. "The girls began to babble all together. I dropped limply to my seat in relief and exhaustion, as if I had been walking a long, long distance.

School was dismissed in the afternoon to give us a chance to view the body which was placed in state in the incense-filled chapel. Class by class, we filed silently through the paneled doors, head bowed, silver rosaries twinkling. Between the branched candlesticks, amid the covey of weeping angels, at the end of the aisle lay Socorro in a satin-quilted bier. As we each paused a minute before the open coffin, I looked into that familiar face, so Sphinx-like, so solemn, and shed a tear for a dear departed friend.

A Lesson in Art

2021-06-30T07:08:00.003-07:00

by: Jaime Nathaniel Tomas

"Alone" (2019) by Abelardo Maceda

The classroom was quiet.

It was recess time. Everyone was outside, playing basketball on the court, eating snacks at the canteen, or playing cards on the bench. The sky was clear and blue, the sun blindingly bright, so bright the lights inside the classroom seemed burnt out, though they weren't.

"Aren't you coming?"

Martin looked up from his desk. Benjy was at the classroom door, half in, half out, an expectant look on his face.

“Sorry," Martin told him. "I have to finish my art project. Agh. I’ll be lucky if I can submit it on time. Who needs this anyway?"

"Uh-huh. Well, there's a game going on. If I'm not there when they pick teams, I'm out." With that, Benjy vanished from the doorway.

Martin's gaze went back to the sheet of drawing paper on his desk. It was a stupid project anyway. He had to think of an ordinary animal and then turn it into an imaginary animal by drawing extra stuff on it. But their teacher had ruled out those animals already thought of before, like horses with wings or horses with horns. "Be original," Ms. Magno said in what Martin thought of as a Mom— voice , pleasant to the ears yet with a quiet note of command behind the music. Not that Martin could draw horse. Not that Martin could draw, period. He could run faster than anybody in his class and could slam hands to the table in arm wrestling, but when it came to drawing, he was useless.

But he was good at the stuff that mattered. Nobody could beat him in one-on-one, on or off the court. Anybody who laughed at him or teased him would regret it. Not that he was the class bully, mean and stupid, but he was the biggest and the strongest guy in class. It was just that those big hands, capable of handling a basketball like a pro or getting a crushing grip on you, couldn't manage a pencil to draw a stick man.

Art class was always tough for him. He hated cutting and, pasting; he either used too much paste and turned the paper into a soggy mess, or used too little and whatever he had pasted on his activity sheet would come off and get lost. Painting was worse, because just when he was about to finish, the brush would slip and smear his painting. But what he hated most about art class was Ms. Magno's litany of "Be creative, be original." How could anyone keep being creative? You had to run out of ideas sometime, except that he never seemed to have any to start with.

The day before, when the assignments were given, Ms. Magno had also returned their previous projects, movie ads based on a story they took up in English. Martin had looked at the red “C” at the back of his paper, its redness an accusation: this is not your best.

He had slumped in his chair. Art class wasn't that important anyway; it wasn't included in your grade average. But he hated it when Parent's Day came, and all their schoolwork was displayed along the classroom walls. He always placed his work in an obscure corner, hoping his parents wouldn't look for it. But they always did. Well, this time I'm going to make something I can place in the center, where everyone can see it, he thought. Then Ms. Magno announced their next project with the words, "Your next assignment, class, will really require some creativity..." And Martin had groaned:

Now, he just sat in his chair, fiddling with his polo shirt or smoothing out the creases in his khaki pants, waiting for the lightning bolt of inspiration to strike, hoping that indeed it would. He could just strike off a chicken, with maybe a cat's tail, but he didn't want to. That was the easy way out, the wimp’s way out. Even though he thought it was a stupid project, he would do his best on it. It was the way he was he couldn't do a so-so job and feel good about it. He didn’t need a basketball game since he was already the best at that. There was no more thrill, no more challenge, no more fun. Who needs it? I do.

He looked around, as if the answer would be posted on the blackboard. But the blackboard had been erased for the next class. The walls were no help her with their banners and class pictures and a signed picture of the president. The picture smiled as it all were right with the world. Not with Martin's world, not with a still blank sheet of paper on his desk, and not with fifteen minutes till the bell rang and art class started.

Martin stopped his eyes on the only other occupied chair in the classroom. The new boy was hunched over something there at his desk in the back corner of the classroom, far from Martin's front row seat. He was still "the new boy" even though three months had passed; he'd still be "the new boy" until the end of the year, maybe even until they graduated. Nobody knew anything about him except his name, Noel, and that was because the class moderator introduced him at the start of the school year. He was never invited to play in any of the games at break time, since he looked too slow to be any good, and he always sat alone in the classroom during recess and lunch, his meals always covering his entire desk. He remembered the first time Noel tried to join a game. He came out onto the court and asked for a game. Benjy had looked at him and said, "Sure. You can be the ball." After that, Noel never even came near the courts.

Noel had the dumb, trusting look of a contented cow, although Benjy would make oinking and mooing sounds when he passed him in the corridor. Noel didn't walk; he waddled, more than a hundred pounds of pure target, his back a billboard for "Kick me" signs, his face just begging to be punched in, his feet just asking to be tripped.

What is he doing over there, Martin wondered. In fact, what does he do besides eat during breaks? No one could keep eating for all that time, even though Noel looked as if he did. So Martin left his desk and went over to Noel's little island of silence inside quiet.

Doesn't this guy take a bath, Martin wondered, and stopped, not at the smell of old sweat, but at what lay on Noel's desk. It wasn't one of his enormous lunches but a sheet of drawing paper, much like the one on his own desk, but all resemblances ended there. For on that piece of paper fish with dogs' heads splashed, cats with eagles' wings ruled the sky, and eagles prowled the land on lions' paws. Those at least he could recognize. Popular mythology hadn't given some of the beasts' names yet. And the merging of the creatures looked natural, feather fitting in with fur, fins matching with paws. And as Martin watched, another beast came to live in Noel's paper world. A fish with dove's wing or the cats to prey on, scales meshing with feathers, took its place in the stark white sky. This fish would never swim. It would soar. It would swoop. It would glide. It would fly.

Martin stood there speechless, his mouth dry, not even a "wow" escaping his lips. Then Noel realized he had an audience. He looked up and saw the wonder in Martin's eyes. He said nothing to Martin; at least his tongue was still, just like his admirer's. The Mongol No. 2 stopped its smooth waltz on its oslo dance floor and was now tripping in an uneasy rhythm. Noel's face went down, then lifted up again, almost in apology. "It's all I can do. Please don't take it against me," the scared eyes seemed to say, behind lenses as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles.

Martin smiled. It's okay, the smile said. "You're good," he said aloud, and patted Noel's padded shoulder and felt a bit like a king blessing a knight when Noel smiled a shy smile. Martin walked away, not wiping his hand as his other classmates would have done, and sat back in his desk, and began to work on a shark that would roam about on the thundering hooves of an elephant, plated with an alligator's armor.