Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. — Amanda Gorman.
Someday, I wish (or hope) to say the same about my country.
The alternative statement; which is that my people, my home are essentially, irreparably, and permanently broken, is just too devastating for me to reckon with.
I watched “Braveheart” starring Mel Gibson when I was, maybe, 16.
The most resounding scene for me from the movie was at the end, when the English were disemboweling William Wallace, an excruciating procedure that he bravely endured. As he was about to die, he gave this rebel yell … “freeeedooom!!!”
I can still hear Mel Gibson in my head, 17 years later.
***
Being a citizen of a democratic country (the CPP and Joma Sison would say “capitalist” and they would also be right), I am prone to asking myself: are we really free? And if we are, what is the value of this freedom?
On more pedestrian concerns, one is free if one can tell another person, hey keep your kid from ruining my day. Without fear of incarceration.
One is free when one can post on Facebook anything one damn well pleases, within the rules of FB of course; otherwise the minions of Mark Zuckerberg will remove your post.
With the pork barrel scam/PDAF-corruption scandal and the Zamboanga-Mindanao crisis that are currently rattling my small home located somewhere west of the Pacific, can I really say that I am free?
My grandparents and their ancestors have been colonized by white skinned (and sometimes, yellow skinned) foreigners for centuries. Yep, that’s ooold history. But as we are a nation with short memories, I believe one must resurrect one’s Histories again and again.
Now, Mr. F. Sionil Jose claims, we are being colonized by our own elites. That would include Janet Napoles and her daughter Jeane.
William Wallace led a revolution to free the Scots from England. In fairness, Scotland is now a part of the United Kingdom; and those Highlander guys in kilts profess loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II.
My country had it’s own revolution way back in 1896. Actually, prior to that, “small revolts” had already been carried out by locals — the Tagalogs, the Ilocanos, the Visayans, etc. — but the 1896 Revolution was the one when several of these tribes banded together and signified our claim that we were one country called Filipinas and to hell with Imperialist Mother Spain.
As every street sweeper in Manila knows, Mother Spain left, only to be replaced by Uncle Sam. Whom we were traded for to the tune of 20 million dollars in 1899 money.
And just when we were beginning to like Uncle Sam just a little, World War II happened; and we (or rather, our grandmothers) were raped (yes, in some instances, literally) by Emperor Hirohito’s samurai wannabes.
Now China is bullying us. But that’s Book II already.
Can anybody blame us for being this messed up?
There is a poem by Teodoro Agoncillo that I love, partly because we recited it in high school during a group declamation contest; and partly because the poem is really good.
I would like to translate it one of these days, but as I am feeling too lazy right now, here it is in Tagalog, “Republikang Basahan”:
Republika baga itong busabos ka ng dayuhan?
Ang tingin sa tanikala’y busilak na kalayaan?
Kasarinlan baga itong ang bibig mo’y nakasusi,
Ang mata mong nakadilat ay bulag na di mawari?
Ang buhay mo’y walang patid na hibla ng pagtataksil
Sa sarili, lipi’t angkan, sa bayan mong dumaraing!
Kalayaan! Republika! Ang bayani’y dinudusta.
Kalayaan pala itong mamatay ka nang abang-aba!
Kasarinlan pala itong ni hindi mo masarili
Ang dangal ng tahanan mong ibo’t pugad ng pagkasi.
Malaya ka, bakit hindi? Sa bitayan ikaw’y manhik,
At magbigting mahinahon sa sarili na ring lubid!
Kalayaan – ito pala’y mayroon na ring tinutubo
Sa puhunang dila’t laway, at hindi sa luha’t dugo!
Humimbing kang mapayapa, mabuhay kang nangangarap,
Sa ganyan lang mauulol ang sarili sa magdamag.
Lumakad ka, hilain mo ang kadenang may kalansing,
Na sa taynga ng busabos ay musikang naglalambing!
Limutin mo ang nagdaan, ang sarili ay taglayin,
Subalit ang iniisip ay huwag mong bibigkasin!
Magsanay ka sa pagpukpok, sa pagpala at paghukay,
Pagkat ikaw ang gagawa ng kabaong kung mamatay.
Purihin mo ang bayaning may dalisay na adhika,
Ngunit huwag paparisan ang kanilang gawi’t gawa.
Republika na nga itong ang sa inyo’y hindi iyo,
Timawa ka at dayuhan sa lupain at bayan mo!
Kalayaan! Malaya ka, oo na nga, bakit hindi?
Sa patak ng iyong luha’y malaya kang mamighati!
Sa simoy ng mga hangin sa parang at mga bundok,
Palipasin mo ang sukal ng loob mong kumikirot.
Kasarinlan! Republika! Kayo baga’y nauulol,
Sa ang inyong kalayaa’y tabla na rin ng kabaong?
Republika! Kasarinlan! Mandi’y hindi nadarama,
Ang paglaya’y sa matapang at sa kanyon bumubuga!
Bawat hakbang na gawin mo sa Templo ng Kalayaan
Ay hakbang na papalapit sa bunganga ng libingan!
Ang paglaya’y nakukuha sa tulis ng isang sibat,
Ang tabak ay tumatalim sa pingki ng kapwa tabak.
Ang paglaya’y isang tining ng nagsamang dugo’t luha,
Sa saro ng kagitinga’y bayani lang ang tutungga.
Bawat sinag ng paglayang sa karimlan ay habulin,
Isang punyal sa dibdib mo, isang kislap ng patalim!
***
“We who are free must use our freedom so those who are not free may gain their own freedom.”
A very nice quote from Abraham Lincoln. I would have to thank Mr. Alex Lacson’s article for this.
Once upon a time, “Sex Scene” used to mean something like this. Picture from themortonreport.com
… or, at the very most, something like this. Image from http://www.comicartschool.ning.com
This is a question that I always ask myself; and the answer always eludes me, like a dream.
What is my country?
All-knowing Erica, never fails to give a right-on reply.
Now, the New Millennium, everybody scoffs when one labels this as “sex scene”. As one male has scoffingly told me, “so where’s the penetration?” Drawing from blog.lisagornick.com
Good Old Filipinas as Told in a Sex Scene by my Spiritual “Porn-Queen” Mother, EJ
The story so far …
Isadora Wing, successful writer, was contemplating leaving her husband, Bennett Wing, who had been emotionally abusing her for the past 5 years …
***
There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage. The bed might as well be a raft in a shark infested sea.
Sleeping alone in the same house, more alone than if we’d never met. Better to live in a cave like a hermit or to haunt singles’ bars, cruising for one-night stands.
The woman, degraded, past all degradation, gets up out of bed, tiptoes down the carpeted hall, and slides into the narrow bed occupied by that stranger, her lawful wedded husband.
They might as well have met in a bar for all the intimacy between them – yet it is also oddly exciting.
“Hey what are you doing?” he asks.
“Feeling you up,” she answered.
“I thought you wanted to castrate me.”
“I do.”
The seriousness of her voice makes him hard immediately. It is their old familiar dance.
She opens his pajama bottoms. He feels for her cunt.
He savagely stabs a finger in. It hurts, but somehow hurt feels right on this particular night.
He stabs another finger in. She pivots on the bed, swiveling on his fingers, and takes his cock in her mouth. She teases it with her tongue. She nibbles around the root with her teeth.
He moans, aroused. Now he is rubbing her clitoris and she wants him. She wants his strange root-shaped cock inside her. The sight of it excites her still more.
She climbs on his upraised penis, swiveling on it, rhythmically rocking. Her orgasm comes in great concentric rings like the water in a still lake when a heavy rock is dropped from a great height.
And then he is suddenly thrusting, thrusting, in search of his own. It is as if his orgasm were somewhere deep inside her and he had to find it, fish for it, hook it, reel it in like a wriggling fish. There, it catches … a nibble … he gropes blidly, then establishes a rhythm again.
Now! There … there … there. The trusting stops and he lies still again. No words. No grunts. Fisherman and fish both gasping at water’s edge.
She climbs off him and thinks:
They might as well be freight trains, locking together for a time, and then going off to opposite ends of the earth. For he doesn’t know any words. Words are the only langguage he cannot speak.
(adapted from: Erica Jong. How To Save Your Own Life, Signet 1977, pp 120-122.)
Note: The above is a VERY loose adaptation. Please read the real book to check the parts I left out. My nation is peopled by neurotics and psychotics who love leaving the bad parts out when conversing with respectable company.
(542 words !!!!! Hurray!!!! definite improvement 🙂 if I may say so, even if a majority of the words were not my own)
***
Admit it. If I label this as “sex scene”, you’ll consider me “deviant” or worse, “disrespectful”. Photo from http://www.sarahkathryn22.tumblr
The best literature is the one that makes you think the writer was gossiping about you. — Anastasia Christina, disrespectful blogger
***
Totally unrelated, except in my imagination:
Conrado de Quiros’ article on US presence in the Philippines –
http://opinion.inquirer.net/58707/on-top-of-the-carabao
I love Nicolas Cage! So I’m putting his picture with his wife here. From news.asiantown.net
In the interest of ridding my crazy country of the corruption that has been holding it down for most of its history. So here are the websites:
http://www.rappler.com/nation/35285-napoles-daughter-owns-80-million-property
http://dulzspeaks.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-speaks-pork-barrel-scam.html?spref=fb
http://momandpopmoments.com/2013/07/31/janet-napoles-pork-barrel-scam-theft-from-a-nation/
http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/35781-napoles-lawyer-threatens,-rappler-replies
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breaking-news/2013/08/05/pork-barrel-scam-probe-not-open-public-296202
To My Fatherland:
Recorded in the history of human sufferings is a cancer of so malignant a character that the least touch irritates it and awakens in it the sharpest pains. Thus, how many times, when in the midst of modern civilizations I have wished to call thee before me, now to accompany me in memories, now to compare thee with other countries, hath thy dear image presented itself showing a social cancer like to that other!
Desiring thy welfare, which is our own, and seeking the best treatment, I will do with thee what the ancients did with their sick, exposing them on the steps of the temple so that every one who came to invoke the Divinity might offer them a remedy.
And to this end, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully, without discriminations; I will raise a part of the veil that covers the evil, sacrificing to truth everything, even vanity itself, since, as thy son, I am conscious that I also suffer from thy defects and weaknesses.
THE AUTHOR
EUROPE, 1886
Manang Bok's House 