when blogging becomes a refuge

i just felt like blogging today, after coming from Bacolod City where I had spent my first few years of childhood. It was an idyllic city then, as my family and I lives in a place full of flowering trees and plants which I used to water every morning, with my urine poured into it as fertilizer. afterwards, my brothers and i would sail a small banca at the back of our house, go out through a small containment of water which opens out into the seashore and where we would pick seashells and other ocean habitues like crablets and shrimps. the air was clean and fresh, which probably strengthened our lungs to survive smoking, pollution and emotional stresses.



going with my sister and brother was reliving those years of nature escapes which also deepened our imagination. I remember sitting on a rocking chair in a louvre-type window of our house, and listening to "Malaguena" played on the piano by someone from a house owned by a hacendero or landlord or landlady across ours. In between our houses were bamboo shoots emitting rickety sounds which made me feel being in a fantasy-land full of ghost stories.



but the musical piece stuck in my mind and i bought a score later on for my personal study later on.



Aged 7 or 8 years old then, every four o'clock in the afternoon, I used to play the piano, reaching up to the twilight hours where the sunrays would shine upon the musical sheets like golden hands of God, illuminating the passages for me to continue playing and playing classical music arranged for a child's hands.



my teacher was Eva Llorca then who gave me the rudiments of piano-playing in a very discipline way so that I was able to develop a unique initiative to study music with and without a teacher. yes, because later on, enrolling in one became quite tedious. my last succeeding teacher was not as studious as she was in teaching me. A graduate of chemistry, she ventured in piano teaching rather sloppily and I could sense that by the way she had destroyed the wooden finish of the piano cover with her pencil striking it to beat as I was playing. It was only after my sister had cautioned her that she stopped doing it.



but if she was a real scientist, or even artist, she should have already noticed the ugly scratches of her pencilhead on the cover. also, when i finished the second grade John Thompson, she wrote in blue ballpen my name and then misspelled it. Ugh. for a young mind as mine, it was a great disaster. At that time, i needed to idolize someone nearly perfect especially in terms of spelling the names of their students. Or I guess, Ms. Llorca presented to me a very good image of a really disciplined piano tutor. anyway, until now, i still play the piano, ouido or with a score.

so when I visited 90-year old Mama J. in her house, I played her favorites as well as mine. She came out to greet me in the sala and really felt very much reinvigorated. Then I played "all of me" a song which her husband and the family really loved and sang whenever someone would be in front of the piano. She could still remember the words, too and so she sang with us.

Bacolod is truly a place for artistic inspiration. My own nephew, now a famous painter in the States and here in the country, created his one-man show paintings in the heart of one of the towns. shall I mention his name? others might say I am riding on his popularity. But he is famous for his expressionistic searing style. By the way, he will be home again this Nov or December. Aside from these examples, the Masscara Festival is one testimony to that artistry which the late Ely Santiago started. There ought to be a monument for him, by the way for having institutionalized such a festival.

Then of course, the Showroom of the Association of Negros Producers attest to the varied talents of Negrenses. I wish I were a resident so that I could also participate in the exhibitions. Not exactly because MetroManila is a hard nut to crack in terms of getting popular as an artist, but rather as a way of feeling collectively connected with our roots.

rest

I never thought that a five-day rest from MetroManila could bring a reinvigorated feeling within me. it is not something that is easily acquired here. it is something sought after all. you see, harassment comes in various forms in our country -- starting from hits at age, to hits at dark skin, hits at being single and without a boyfriend, to being called smelly and dirty. despite the developments of technology, there are really forces that cannot accept contrary opinions, all in the name of money and power.

how i pray and hope that this administration would wither away quickly and give us a new breathing space with which to exercise our humanity. the thing is, our whole lives are taken up parrying all those harassments, analyzing how we can move institutions to stop them, and afterwards ending up so tired that not an ounce of solution seems directed to their final termination.

money is what strengthens these harassers to continue their operations. i did not know that gloria could be that ingenious to know how to manipulate some people's desire for power and greed.

but anyway, God will provide the final answer.

email eureka

I have just recovered my email address. my goodness it looks like google philippines is not so reliable when it comes to protecting our passwords. it has been infiltrated by bugs.

anyway, am i glad to be back in circulation. but sometimes i get email fatigue, a dis-ease that makes us distance ourselves from reading kilometric sentences that point nowhere. at bacolod city, i was able to read emails, uninterrrupted and with speed during the first two days. on the third day, bugs set in, slowing down operations. and on my last day, i could no longer open my emails.

the world has to find a way of correcting this intellectual aberration of other people destroying communication, and on top of that, invading privacies. i think this is a subtle form, a development from the SSS operations during Hitler's regime. it strikes at the root of people's consciousness which makes them vulnerable to blind obedience to unseen forces, and to mute acquiescence to all types of mental manipulation.

there has to be an end to evil in this world

Less Harassed

I thinkthat the establishment here in this country is getting less paranoid. I am less harassed now, or was yesterday a lie low time for them? I carried a small placard which had the caption: SA ILALIM NG M. LAW, ANG TAUMBAYAN WALANG SARILING PAG-IISIP AT WALANG OPINYON. Many women passengers on board the MRT were reading it but their faces were bland, no reaction. Are the Filipino people immune, callous, desensitized to activism already? The extent of harassment and government reaction to critical thinking has taken a toll on the people's political standpoint.

Or is it the media? Have the media not allowed the people to voice out their grievances, so much so that the people are always waiting for them now to take up the issues and speak for them? There should always be space for assessing how powerful media could be in terms of speaking about issues but not always speaking for the people?

Or is it possible that the people are mesmerized by the kind of officials we have -- who all come from the elite, affluent and speaking English all the time?

Amid all these, on the other side of the globe, the American people are in preparation to decide who will lead them next January 2009 up.

It must be very exciting for them. But I wonder, how honest their elections would be. One US official was asked here how elections had been after bush was declared winner. and he said, "We Americans learn from your elections," and he was talking about the counting in Florida.

Really now!

---Yesterday, I went to Makati to get my loyalty reward phone from Globe and to get my celfone fixed. The guy there said that it would be sent to my son's place. When I told him that I had talked already to the Globe in Quezon Ave, and they told me that I could just come today, 21st of Septmber and get the unit. He viewed his computer and then said that all I have to do is call up the hotline, 7301000.

Bureaucrat!

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I finished my Supreme Court Memofor Reconsideration, detailing my stint at the Inquirer from 89 to 91, why I should have been regularized for working as a regular columnist weekly for almost three years earning a pittance of 300 pesos per article.

In it, I delved into historical and theoretical issues about communication. How a big newspaper like the Inquirer could take advantage of idealistic writers (hint, like me) and pay me a patsy amount just because it could hire writers, make them submit articles and pretend that no employer-employee exists.