Pasensya! These are dangerous times!

[From a conversation with a noted radio broadcaster]

When I told him about it, he did not laugh. Unlike most people who learned about what happened along the boundary of barangay San Isidro in Carmen, Davao del Norte at 9:24 to 9:34 am on Black Saturday, he did not even pass judgment over what we did or did not do, as if there were really some right things and wrong things to do under those circumstances; as if the incident itself was our fault.
Things like that always happen, he said. It was designed to scare you, he said. It also happened to me before, he said. Two times.
The first time it happened to me was back in the 80s somewhere in Ecoland. I never knew I ventured into the territory of intelligence agents.
We were just looking for corpses in a sack because someone called the radio station about the corpses hidden in a toilet of Kabacan elementary school. The one who called said the corpses were hogtied and placed inside the sack. This was in the 80s, when Davao City was the killing fields. I used to work for DXRH and four of us--three regular reporters and a volunteer--took quick notes of it and went to find the corpses.
We did not know where Kabacan elementary school was, so we kept asking.
We went all around the place looking for the goddam school. We reached where the Hall of Justice building is standing now, asking where Kabacan was. There was no SM City yet. There used to be the headquarters of the CHPG (Constabulary Highway Patrol Group) nearby in a building they shared with the police. We were so determined to find the corpses that when we came upon the headquarters, we asked the policemen on duty whether they knew where the Kabacan school was.
"Why?" The policeman asked.
"Someone told us there were corpses inside the toilet there. We want to verify if it was true because we want to report it on air."
The policemen told us to wait. One of them went inside to tell the chief. Afterwards, the policeman who went inside came back. He said the chief wanted us all to go down.
We were using the Pinoy 2 vehicle, the mobile patrol of DXRH, at that time, and the vehicle did not have a lock. We brought along with us the mobile radio base at that time and I was afraid it might get lost if I leave it alone in the car.
So, I told the police, maybe, I should stay in our vehicle to watch over our equipment. But the policeman said, no, the chief asked all of you to go down. All of you, he said. So, I was forced to go down.
But before that, they took our tape recorders, our IDs, even our wallets. When they took our wallets, I was alarmed. Why would they take our wallet? I asked myself. I began to feel helpless. They all forced us all to go down.
“Get inside!” said one policeman who shoved me into the door using his armalite butt because I did not want to follow inside.
Then, we were led into a room in a basement which only had a stair going down. We were practically under the earth, then. When we reached the bottom, we saw the chief. He had a desk. So, I realized, it was his office.
I never knew until then that the building had an underground; and that they used that underground office as base of their operations.
He made us stand in the middle of the hall. All of us, made to stand in the middle. Do you know how it felt? They could just have shot all of us there and nobody would know. We were under the ground. They’ve taken all our IDs.
The next thing that the chief ordered was, take off your clothes, meaning, the upper clothes. So, we took off our shirts. Then, he ordered us to take off our pants and we took off our pants.
Then, the chief asked, “So, what brought you here?”
“We’re just looking for the corpses, sir,” we said. “Somebody told us there are corpses hidden in the toilet of Kabacan Elementary School. We’re only here to cover the news.”
“Ahh,” the chief said. “Maybe, those were dogs.”
That’s all what the chief said.
Then, he said, “You may dress up now.”
Then, he said to his men, “Give them back their belongings.”

On our way home, we were all so shaken no one said a word.

Actually, they always do things like this to scare you. Especially when you venture inside their territory.
It happened to me two times, he said. The second time was when I was walking along Jones Avenue, this black jacket.
Jones Avenue, somewhere in Acacia, used to be the site of big protests in the 80s. This used to be where the protesting groups meet. This was also where the three (or four?) Davao lawyers, among them Lawyer Larry Ilagan, the husband of Luz Ilagan, were arrested.
I was walking through this area wearing this black jacket one day, the recorder clipped in my arm, when a car stopped just beside me, all its windows opened at the same time, with a full-cocked long firearm protruding from each window, all pointed at me. Somebody inside the car ordered me to raise my hands.
I could not immediately raise my hands because my recorder was clipped in my armpit. If I raise my left hand, my recorder will fall.
But they compelled me to raise both arms, so, I was forced to do just that. My recorder fell crushing to the ground. Yes, the recorder fell! I was lucky no one pulled the trigger.
When everything was cleared, they said, “Sorry, Bay, pasensya! These are difficult times, you know.”
They must have mistaken me for an NPA (New People’s Army).
I picked up my recorder. It was totally shattered.
They just sped away.

HE SAID these are the things they do to you when you venture into their territory, their operation base. That is where the body was found. That was also the place where they throw away the corpses. Who said there is such thing as the right thing or the wrong thing to do under those circumstances? You could never guess what’s on their minds!
When they come upon you and isolate you from the rest of humanity, the first thing for you to do is to find connection because you never know what will happen next. When they take away your phone, your last chance is gone.
It’s better to err on the side of caution.
You would never know whether or not your press ID can save you.

Dear Old Self

So, do you still remember going into the midnight sale at the Metro? No, no, not even the Metro but that rustic department store somewhere near Gaisano South of Colon? Yes,Fairmart. Where we used to walk through the thickening crowds swarming the store and pushing their way to the rummage bins, where the sales staff used to throw away those items as thick as they’re dusty and smelling of old corners for having stayed on the display shelves for years.
What were you thinking then, as you waded through the swelling, palpitating crowd, finding your way around the thick forest of clothes, inch by inch, nudging those who shoved and elbowed you, shoving and elbowing in return?
What decadence, you used to grumble, your eyes popping at the price tags of a coveted piece of blouse or underwear which could transform you into another you, affording you a chance to dream, “What decadence!” you exclaimed, mimicking that Russian KGB in a popular American situation comedy you used to watch in Honey’s room inside the Tsa Elim Dormitory.
So, what were you thinking then? Did you think you can change yourself from being a poor girl from a land across the sea now in a big city to get a college education? Did you think you can change the world by changing the way you looked?
You tried a dress and saw how it suited your young and scrawny body, how it flattered your skin, your mind a whirl of emotion as you looked at that face in the mirror. Was it you? Who’s that girl? You asked, turning, staring, wanting to take all, spending a day’s worth of food allowance to buy a dream and feed your burning delusions.
I didn’t know what happened after that. I have counted the years and surveyed this particular time, and found out how brief it was compared to the great avalanche that eventually followed and pulled you out of there and brought you to me.
I wish you had been more circumspect. I wish I had warned you but I was equally careless! I wish you had tarried in one of those magazine shops somewhere near the Ultra Vistarama and the Oriente where you can read Time and Newsweek for only P5 or so, or a newspaper for P2 or so; or ogle at Itzhak Bentov’s “Stalking the Wild Pendulum,” or Carl Sagan’s “Broca’s Brain” in another bookstore, instead of shoving your way into that stupid midnight sale, flirting with your own ego!

Stuck!

The shape of my writers block is a jagged rock that feels like a migraine. Why can’t you finish what you’re writing and move on with your life? Ja kept asking me, so, I go back to this tiny laptop to see what I can do with the story, but still the story refuses to budge. What is wrong with my head? The migraine seems to open ugly cracks on my mind where the blood cascades in powerful torrents.

The boy who (does not) refuse to grow up

Yes, I’m here inside Peter Pan, the curious dropping place of women shopping in the nearby mall. They came here in thongs and printed dresses, mother and daughter in the next table, a woman, a friend and a cousin, wiggling their bodies, shaking their hair as they go from table to counter, waiting for their orders. I just arrived here with Sean, who after a bite of the sugar-coated raisin bread, loosened up a bit and told me how, when he was in Grade One, he tried to buy an icecream cone worth 20 pesos with his 25-centavo coin. He was a bit puzzled why the woman selling it was mad at him. It was such an embarrassing blunder, he said, but now that he is entering Grade Four, he already has a fair understanding of things and would no longer commit such a mistake. I told him it was okay. I sensed it was better here than at Dunkin’ Donuts, where he would be preoccupied with the sweetness of his ChocoWacko. Or maybe at the Bread Station where he would be too busy eyeing the array of starchy delights to put in our basket. Earlier, I was here to exorcise the headache I’ve been having on Holy Thursday and Good Friday and erupted full blast on Easter Sunday. Now that everything is over, I am perfectly okay.

Everything Is Accounted For

What they pay with money, I pay with my own body. I pay with skin boils, inflamed sinuses, sore throats that develop into hard coughs, stomach acidity, stomach ulcers, arthritic knees, blurring eyesight, blurring memories, crumbling spirit, long hours of hard mental labor.

My Kerala

Maybe, she's still out there, doing volunteer works in Kerala. Though, I found out a few days ago the Kerala she was talking about is not the place where Arundhati Roy grew up but quite a totally different kind of Kerala.
“Why?!” she had asked, raising her brows when she saw the look of consternation on my face. “Does it make any difference? What is so special about your Kerala and this Kerala? The work I'm doing here is just the same. Why do I have to go to India?”
I said because in India, the colors of the flies are different.
I'm thinking of this because I'm beginning to be afraid. I just walked out of the store because I found out, rummaging through my bag just when I was about to pay, that I was short of cash and that I could have placed my money somewhere else. The storeowner, an accommodating lot, allowed me to bring the food to the table, while I run to the nearest ATM but when I rummaged through my bag again, I discovered that even my ATM was missing. I placed an emergency call to Ja but Ja, as usual, is unwilling to help. He is perched on his stool on Mt. Olympus, watching the rise and fall of whatever stocks on Bloomberg, so what do you expect?
Now, I'm beginning to be afraid. Someone is telling me to see to it that schedules should be followed to the letter so that nothing will go to waste. The hair on my neck stood on ends. I thought the world already knew I never follow anything to the letter. How can they missed my reputation as image breaker, iconoclast, rule breaker?
Years ago, I told my Uncle during the funeral of an older Uncle that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who follow rules and those who break them. "I belong to the latter," I said, pursing my lips, "I make my own rules." Uncle was shocked.
Now, I'm afraid of people who tell me to follow rules. I spend my whole lifetime breaking them and I'm not about to give that up.

The Language of Birds

On February 16, 2010, I paused after I finished Batman’s part in, “On a Deadly Trail: Three Journalists Killed in the Philippines” when I noticed a piercing sound that began at the neighbor’s ground and increased in intensity as it approached my window. It sounded like a fierce warning—so I thought it was somebody downstairs, a possible assassin, perhaps, whistling a secret code.
Ja said I was becoming neurotic because of what I was writing—but there was something about this particular sound, which was so shrill and so piercing as if it tried to attract attention. When the whistle grew very painful to my ears, I turned around to find out what was going on.
And when I did? Lo! A yellow bird, a tamsi, perched itself on my window grill, chirping with delight; its companion, perched on the clothesline, returning a piercing chirp. The sight was a treat after days of wrestling with my thoughts, staring at an empty computer screen for long hours. The birds made me think of Batman, a Davao broadcaster killed on Christmas Eve in 2007 and Geneboyd, a young photojournalist killed in Jolo, Sulu on November 12, 2004.
I remember how Batman last waved at us at Yellow Haus while I and Mandaya and Jepoi and Di were brainstorming for the maiden issue of I Love You, Baby magazine, the magazine that circulates in our mind. It was late at night and Batman and Tec, talking at a table away from us, stood up to go. He was gone a few weeks after.
I did not get to finish our last conversation with Geneboyd. We were at the Waterfront Hotel waiting for the press con to start and he was talking about that cartoon show a lot better than Spongebob Squarepants we used to be so crazy about in 2004. We had to stop because the guests had arrived and we had to listen and he had to take pictures. We all got down to work and rushed to write the stories afterwards. But the next thing I knew, he was in Jolo and something happened.
The whole thing was so unacceptable and senseless, I got the sudden urge to ask him, who was that cartoon character, again, Boyd? Please tell me. Please tell us what happened in downtown Jolo. But he could no longer reply.
I thought about the two journalists as I watched the bird on my window grill pointing its beak to the sky. I never knew a bird’s beak could be so beautiful. It was so extraordinarily sharp and I gasped at its thinness. I wanted to grab my camera and capture the moment. But the birds must have noticed. They started to fly, still chirping at each other and shrilly calling back to me. I strongly felt they were trying to tell me something I couldn’t make heads or tails of, a message that must be very important.
Suddenly, I wish I could understand the language of birds.

Happy New Year!

Did you notice how hollow it sounded, even as a soundless text message from me to those happy enough to remember today?

The doctor is sick

I tried to make out the expression of her face as she sat silhouetted against the glass door. But the glare from the street outside hurt my eyes. All I could see was the shape of her hair falling on her shoulders and half her body leaning against a chair. Her voice was sad and clinical, as if she was explaining a surgical procedure. “The lumads—once they get pregnant, they already half-expect to die,” she continued in a monotone. “Yet, when everybody talks about the Reproductive Health Bill, nobody thinks about the lumads.”
For a moment, I swore she was only talking to herself. But she was facing me, gesturing with her hands. She tilted her head slightly up, so that the light caught briefly the outline of her nose and eyes. She was a doctor. Her profession trained her only to deal with the coldness of empirical facts.
I squinted. The sun outside was harsh. It was hot, something they blame on global warming. Perhaps, if I had only moved closer to where she was, I could have seen some anguish—or anger—on her face. Perhaps, I could have established a human connection. Perhaps, I could have understood better what she was talking about. But I was a little farther away and I could only see her shadow.

Please remember everything!

Where were you on January 2, four years ago?
I tried asking you but you can’t remember.
Is it only the mind that forgets? Or, is it the heart?
Is it because we did nothing significant that day that the date simply slipped off our memory for good?
We must still have been living in that rented house with a red gate, numbered 72, along McArthur Highway, the house that Sean thought was our own to the chagrin of the real owner. It was the house that Ja, your stepdad, described as a garage because the owner used to park their rusty old sedan and a new van just outside our front door window. It was a house that I remember with horror and helplessness because the bedroom where we used to sleep had no window and the other room, where you used to draw and be alone, used to have windows that looked out to a stove in the open kitchen of the other house. That window was eventually overshadowed by ugly granite when the owner built another extension to their house.
It was a perfect trap, that house. It was built only as an afterthought.
First of all, I’m not very good at dates. I couldn’t remember the exact day I met your father or when exactly America first attacked Iraq, but I can still picture his eyes and the way that his shirt revealed the curves of his shoulders. Just as I had clear pictures on my mind of Operation Desert Storm on the pages of Newsweek magazine on the magazine rack of the Recoletos library; and then, of Typhoon Ruping, afterwards, when the entire city went dead and we had to hunt for bread and canned goods out on Colon street because there was nothing to eat in the entire Tsa Elim dormitory. I still can remember the exact day when you arrived, the dress I was wearing, the look of panic in your father’s eyes, the exhilaration and the long hours of struggle before that. It was a day that changed my life, so, I can’t believe I can’t remember anything on January 2, 2006, when you turned 13. I remember meeting towards the end of that year another 13 year old boy whose mother and father were killed on the street of Kidapawan in broad daylight; and I immediately took to him because I was thinking of you.
If I could not remember where I was on January 2 four years ago, it was not because I had forgotten you. I’m sure I was shuttling to and from Davao city and hometown again, desperate, as usual; trying to cope with the crazy demands of the holidays and jobs. Maybe, it was the Christmas I lost Sean’s biplanes along with his medicines and other toys in a small backpack in the bus, because deep inside, I was crumbling. The holidays always required me to spend the money that I didn’t have and I was always thinking that I wasn’t good enough for you.

Missing Kwin Dukduk

In times like these, one could not help missing Kwin Dukduk. She’s an intense young woman who fiercely believes in what she says and would often arrive with lots of egg pie from Goldilocks to give when she’s terribly upset about something.
At least, Kwin Dukduk is sharp.
I missed her today when the sun was at its zenith, and somebody started talking about the discarded bag of a boxer’s wife selling at P120,000 or more. Actually, I did not have anything against the boxer’s wife or her discarded bag (which Ylevol said was Chanel and did not interest me at all). But somebody insisted that if the boxer’s wife only lived abroad, she could have been selling her discarded bags or panties for a million dollars and everybody would be crazy enough to buy them.
I was not surprised at all by that stupid display of absurdity and decadence. Just like everybody else I’ve been used to it, but I couldn’t help opening my mouth because I know of somebody who sold his old camera seven times its purchase price by bestowing upon it some historical value no brand new camera could ever have. (It was Jamil!)
Didn’t we learn enough that the market has always been susceptible to some idiosyncratic twists and turns just because such thing as 'market value' has oftentimes been dictated by perception? And that, perceptions going awry, with all the overvaluations and undervaluation in between, had precipitated numerous historical crashes in the stock market and the world economy, looking back to the early part of this century alone, including the most recent global financial meltdown? I know that if Kwin Dukduk were here before me, she would vehemently nod her head and say, "The market is such a cold-blooded idiot. It has no heart at all," and then, because this thought itself would upset her, she’d turn the computer's volume up and break into a song by Susan Vega!
One could not help missing Kwin Dukduk. Every time I was with her, I always felt I could turn the world upside down and still emerge as winner.

Letter to Sean

I was thinking of you when I got a glimpse of the waves of Lianga from the car on the road. I never knew that waves could gallop like that. But there they were, right before my eyes, galloping like horses at the back of thatched structures that served as the public market. It was raining and the people I was with in Lianga were taking lunch at an eatery that displayed gigantic fresh crabs, fresh catfish and octopuses that reminded me of the tentacles of the kraken in the Pirates of the Caribbean. I never stopped thinking of you even for a while. When I saw the kraken’s tentacles on the plate, I wanted to shout “The Flying Dutchman!” the way we do it at home, taking in a scared look before breaking into our long hard laugh that continue to amaze the neighbors.
I told the people of Lianga I felt like a cannibal eating the kraken. They were telling me some people sometimes come down from the mountains to flee the fighting and stay in the gym for days.
Braving the rain, I went out of the eatery to take pictures of the galloping waves, intending to frame them against the dark shadows of the thatched huts.
But I discovered when I got closer, that my camera could not capture the terrifying texture of the waves before my eyes. Within the thatched huts were women persuading me to buy the fish they were selling. I aimed my shot at the gleaming bodies of their fish, instead.
It was a terrifyingly ugly shot because it was made as a compromise. I’m sure that people who would happen to take a look at it someday would wonder about the senselessness of the whole shot and would harshly judge me for taking it.
As you grow older, you would know how to be true to what is in your heart. Once you set out to take pictures of the waves, by all means, do it whatever it takes, and don’t stop to take pictures of krakens.

The Lettuce Tree

I wish you'd find time to water the lettuce I planted in the pot outside my window. I only remember it on my way to Esperanza when I looked out the window of the running car and saw the murky brown water of the Naboc River snaking down the ridges below, trying to but never finding the level ground that could put a stop to all its running.
I want you to remember as you water the plant that there was only one leaf left of it the other week but now it has grown three leaves, each one promising to be greener than the other.
Let's not allow the plant to wilt. Let us work together and pray for more shoots to grow and spread into leaves so that when I come back, its succulence and crispiness will make us forget the blight.

Bottled Feelings

I know you’d say this is such a boring picture. That you’ve seen this before and that I could have done this better; maybe, find another angle to give larger space for the ripples in the water, so that maybe, it could bring about the catharsis that we need.
You know, you might be right. I took this picture towards the sunset in early 2006 when things were equally foreboding as they are now. I remember staring at the dark clouds looming over the estuary of Davao Gulf and thinking I should not take such kind of pictures in the beginning of the year--!
But who could resist? I clicked away the shutters, discarding the symbol and, as my pagan soul seems to warn me, a thousand and one repercussions. In the face of such irresistible beauty who would still care for meanings? Isn’t that how cruel our impulses are?
This morning, I was crying at the dining table because Jamil told me I was not cut out for running stories, I often get left behind. But I was not cut out for slow moving stories either because I had not written anything of the sort for a long time.
I did not have anything against Jamil. He is the kind of man who would push you down when you’re down and push you up when you’re up.
In fairness to Jamil, he cried the first time he saw my first fiction in a magazine. That year, we still lived in a garage. He used to treat me like that woman in VS Naipaul’s “The House of Mr. Biswas” but the day he read that story, he came up to the room in a daze and taking a long, hard look at me, said, “Ma, you made it, Ma.” If you’d known Jamil for a long time, you wouldn’t believe he would do it—come to the room in a daze and say, “Ma, you made it, Ma.” I wanted to ask him, made what? But I merely stared at him and kept quiet because I knew how lousy that story was. I kept a copy of it in my drawer to take a look at it once in a while but over the years, my belief only strengthened that it was really such a lousy piece. So, I hid it again in the drawers hoping that someday, I will have the courage to burn it. I was not crying because Jamil told me I was not cut out for running stories because I believe he was right. I was crying because I remembered something that Rainier Maria Rilke wrote in his “Letters to the Young Poet.”
Things are getting so dark for me these days that I began rummaging my files to search for meanings.

Lusting at Zeitgeist

It’s a German word, I know. Which means, the spirit and outlook of the age. But we never saw it when over a year ago on our way to the campus, roommate Prathibha and I first passed by the row of shops just outside our dormitory’s gate.
We were only aware of the most pleasurable things staring at us from the glass walls: Jeanette Winterson’s, “Arts and Lies,” Neil Gaiman’s collections, and again, further down, Winterson’s “Oranges are not the only Fruit.”
We were almost late for the morning classes but we couldn’t help ourselves. We entered the shop, almost gasping for breath, to find more treasures inside (perhaps, the world classics crammed in such a small space): Gabriel Garcia’s “No One Writes to the Colonel,” in at least three editions; “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” some old classics by Chesterton and other titles I thought I’d never ever find on earth.
It was only much, much later, when Pratish and I would meet our German roommate Jana would we find time to look at the shop from a distance and read the German name above it.
If there was one pleasure that Pratish and I were hanging on to during our summer stay in Manila, it was this very small bookstore that offered the best of the world’s classics in such a small space. The prices, however, were not really as dirt-cheap as it could go: the owner, of course, knew what she was selling and had kept the prices only as low as P100. I discovered that in Manila, you can book-hunt to places where you can actually find books by your favorite authors at P50 (try the uppermost floors of the National Bookstore in Cubao) or even at P20. Try the Instituto de Cervantes during its anniversary and you’d get them with long-stemmed American roses!

Lady of the Flies

Perhaps, you should stay here for a while. It feels better to work with editors who treat you like a real person.
Quite unlike those people you knew who rushed you into writing something they thought was easy simply because they didn’t know anything about it and you were just as stupid to oblige.
The last time you left this job for such a thing as a book project, they let you climb the highest mountain in Davao Oriental on a habalhabal.
The driver got so pissed off when you insisted getting off the motorcycle instead of sticking it out with him down the slope that you swear was an 80 per cent incline. You went there supposedly to edit a book, didn’t you, and not to commit suicide!
But when you reached the highway and you were back on this habalhabal, the driver revved up the engine and sped along the road like crazy. All the people by the roadside of Caraga were turning their heads to see what was going on and because the driver was already flying so maddeningly fast, you only managed to catch a glimpse of the look of concern on their faces.
The driver only wanted to scare you, you knew even without looking. He thought you did not have the right to complain because you were a visitor. It’s part of the customs and traditions of the place, is it not? You must do everything they wanted to—including getting killed in a stupid habalhabal ride, maybe?
As soon as you reached their house, somebody asked, ‘Were you scared? That was so fast!’ and you managed to say, ‘Was that the fastest you could get?’
You were seething with fury. When, days later, you told a man about it, the man said, ‘You should have complained, you should have gotten off that motorcycle, you should have told them how you felt!’
But you were just a woman they were trying to scare. You knew you would detest the look of triumph on their faces. So, all you did was to tell them their fastest was not even fast enough for you.
It was a totally different kind of job. They made you travel over 24 hours on the road non stop from Davao to Bukidnon to Cagayan de Oro, to Iligan where you crossed the Mukas wharf near Kulambogan on your way to Ozamis, going all the way to Oroquieta and the small towns leading to Dapitan and when you reached Dipolog, you could not even sleep a wink because they had to start the meeting where you were supposed to interview, or at least ask questions from, the leaders they gathered. You could no longer remember what questions you managed to ask because you were so numb and dumb from sleeplessness and exhaustion after more than 24 hours on the road.
They didn’t notice, though. They were so goddamned dedicated to their work, they thought it was natural for you to travel all the way from the other side of Mindanao and still be up and about to ask all the brilliant questions!
When they were about to start the meeting a latecomer arrived and everyone decided to let her have a nap because she traveled three hours on the road. Three hours against your 24 hours!
When you got too tired to stay awake, they just let you sleep on a hammock while flies buzzed around the benches and tables scattered over the uneven dirt floor. The people you met there were patient, too. Their leader did not make it because he got no money for the fare, said the woman you talked to. The sound of your last conversation mingled with the buzzing of flies in your dream.

Women are strong

[[From the Journal of a Demented Woman. Retrieved from the Trash Bin of Decaying Things]]
“Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong we are until we’re pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.” –Louise Erdrich

I’m training for sainthood and this has gone on for years. Martyrdom is not my cup of tea but here I am, sacrificed before an altar, staying awake at 10:41 at night, waiting for him to come home.
It’s another kind of experience, something which fiction could only approximate but never copy. Bleeding and angry at the same time, I sit here on a chair, facing this computer on my table, trying to make sense of the ticking of the clock, thinking of that body—a baby I once pushed out of my body now a being separate from me. It is now a body with a life of its own and a mind that has totally discarded me.
Early in the afternoon, I climbed up the stairs leading to the high school faculty room on the second floor and was surprised to find the teachers waiting for me. The stories they told me were simply astounding. Of the school disciplinarian chancing upon the four of them--smoking? maybe drinking?--in a store in an eskinita across the school ground. Of the sketchpad full of drawings—his drawings?—of demons and monsters and obscenities—what do they mean?
Six hours after I left the school campus, I sit here, waiting interminably, thinking of a million things that could go wrong. I am thinking of the dark, deserted road stretching from our house to the highway. I am also thinking of the people surrounding him, I am thinking of gang wars in the news, of dangers lurking in the streets. I am thinking, too, how come that he cared more for other people than he ever cared for me?
Where in the world is he?
It’s like inside a torture chamber, sitting here, held incommunicado for eternity. It’s like the crucifixion of Christ, only that, this time, I am the one being nailed. I can feel the stab wounds all over my body. I am bleeding.

Thoughts in Midair

I did not know how it happened. I only knew I was on top of the stairs, hurrying down to catch up with Sean and Ja who had already gone out the door a few minutes before. When all of a sudden, I lost my balance and my feet and body succumbed to the laws of uncontrollable motion. I could see all the people down below in the midst of their Chowking dinner, looking up at me and gasping, all of us contemplating the natural course of my fall. Right there in midair, I was struck by the hopelessness of the situation: I had fallen from some other places long ago but never from such a stairway as this. There was no way I could ever stop the fall. I only wished I could get a glimpse of Sean and Ja’s retreating back and ask them to come back.
But it happened in a flash. I did not even have enough time to say goodbye as I looked down and contemplated my end at the bottom of the stairway. These were my last thoughts as my head hit the floor and I saw the sparks of a million stars.

For Each Pot, a Bowlful

“Don’t forget to water the plants. Pour one bowlful of water onto each pot in the morning because that’s what ganda loves. Don’t use the dipper from the bathroom. Use the big bowl we use for rice. The rice bowl is the symbol of life. Using it will give us sustenance, blessings. As long as the plant lives, we will survive.”
This was the text message I sent Ja exactly a year ago from a room I shared with Pratish on Esteban Abada, just a 15-minute walk to the Ateneo campus on Katipunan Avenue, where we were having on campus classes at the Asian Center for Journalism. The Ganda, which I raised in a pot at home in Nova Tierra, was a gift from Babu Avelina, a brave and intelligent Mansaka woman we interviewed some time in September 2008 for a book project on the Lumads in Mindanao.
I carried the plant uprooted from Babu’s garden in Maragusan to the rickety bus that took us out of the rustic town near the foot of Mt. Candaraga to Tagum city. From Tagum, I took a more comfortable bus to Davao city, where Sean and Karl were waiting for me after such a long absence.
I couldn’t describe in one sitting what happened to me during the trip.
It was not Babu—but something else about the whole set up that actually left me feeling drained and downright oppressed. The plants must have sensed how my feelings towards the whole thing warmed and soured and then, warmed again. Only the memory of Babu Avelina sitting in her porch that faces the beautiful Mt. Candaraga reminds me that the trip was worth taking after all.
Mansakas use Gandas to spice up their tinolas (I could no longer remember how they call the dish) just the way we use onions. Our hosts proudly let us taste the dish for lunch—and that was the first time I tasted the native spice.
When Ja saw the plant, he said, “Oh, my God, I never knew you’d like to plant a weed!”
I merely smiled. Months later, when out of desperation, I put the weeds into his cup of noodles, he suddenly changed his mind.
“I never knew a simple plant like that could make my noodles taste better!” he said.
Now, I’m going ahead of the story. At the time when I sent Ja the text message, he still was unconvinced about my plants. I had to use it as a metaphor to scare him into watering it and taking care of the boys while I was away for the summer. I was worried about my boys. I was worried that the plants might not survive my long absence.
By the end of May, I went home to see the plants, scraggly from lack of water, but still surviving. Sadly, though, this is also how I feel about my boys but thanks God (or Goddess), we survived!

Before Ampatuan

Sometimes, we still look back and realize that we have crossed the line between the before and the after; and we are sad because we could no longer go back to that lazy--no, hectic--Sunday afternoon when everybody was packing, rushing to go. We agreed, we had biases, afterall. We are human beings. Our biases will always be towards humanity. Looking back now, we realize that we are thinking of another place, another time; and the thin line that separated our present from the past is the same thin line that bordered sanity and madness. That Sunday, we never had a hint about what will happen on a Tuesday, in between nine o'clock and eleven o'clock in the morning, when our world changed forever.

Lost and Found: Memories

Maybe, because I’ve taken so many detours in the past and gotten lost so many times in some jungles; maybe, because I’ve been stranded too often in someone else’s kitchen or got trapped in some odd jobs, my memories of dates have gotten so mixed up. Since the day I left the university I’ve been having trouble filling up forms that needed dates: I no longer remember things the way I used to remember them before.
But I still remember very clearly how the news of Ninoy Aquino’s death found us inside the upper classrooms of Holy Cross of Bansalan College in August 1983; which meant, we were in our higher years, then; because higher years at the Holy Cross of my hometown were in the classrooms on the third and fourth floors—the freshmen were on the ground floor.
When news about the Yellow Friday movement reached the airwaves, we were aware of the surging excitement in the world beyond, although we were still being kept inside the protective campus walls. One day, the whole class watched Ninoy’s wake on TV—I couldn’t remember where this was, but we were agog over Kris Aquino because we thought she looked like Jane! And here, the memories came back, Marichu or was it Tessa or Angie calling up Jane to catch a glimpse of her look-alike on screen—but this was still when K was still sweet, slim and seventeen; her mother, not yet President; and we watched Fr. Patrick Payton’s show in the park at night, featuring Jesus, Mary and the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, where at the end Fr. Payton would say, “The family who prays together, stays together;” followed by another show of the Exodus with Moses and his long cane in the desert.
Since I could no longer remember dates, I had to figure out many things on my own, which was rather hard to do. I figured that I couldn’t have graduated from high school in 1982, before Ninoy Aquino was gunned down on August 21, 1983 in the airport tarmac. To find the exact date, I’d begin again in 1972, when (former President) Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law. I was still four years old. I can’t forget the sight and smell of lush Bermuda grass getting mixed up with the sound of Ma in the background, as she turned on the radio to listen to static (was this my memory or the memory of someone telling this to me?!). I remember hearing my agitated Ma the following day, talking to her fellow teacher in a slightly suppressed voice, “huh! Marcos has declared Martial Law!” and the rest of their blah-blah-blah!
The following year, I started school. I’d begin counting six elementary years and add them up with the four years in high school to finally get the exact date I graduated.
Just to make sure I got it right, I’d validate it with another memory: this time, no longer in the four-story building of my high school and its perennial sound of trumpets playing. This time, it’s the memory of huge glass windows awash with sunlight; of whitewashed walls and our tightlipped Ilocano professor holding us in his geodetic engineering class when all we wanted was stick our ears on the radio to listen to the reports of people crowding the streets of Edsa. That was February 21 to 25, 1986.
I did not make it to the reunion of the high school Batch 1984. But the huge streamer they put up had put an end to my figuring out.

Karl

Late in the afternoon of the last day of the year, the sun made bright outlines of your shirts on the clothesline and painted strips of gold on the walls of my room. Near the corner where you always strummed your guitar, sat an empty chair. I listened to the neighborhood kids singing your songs downstairs. All I had were the debris you left behind, as usual: an abandoned cap of the black pentel pen that dried up long ago left lying on the floor, a drawing pad full of sketches of skin-and-bone kids with angular faces, long spiky hair and half-finished bodies, a tattered notebook full of your dogged attempts at rap, the earphones I told you not to mix with my clutter; your soiled socks strewn in the corner.
Where are you? I strain my ears for the sound of your footsteps. It has been 17 years today since you left my body. I wait for the sound of knocking at the door.
My room is full of shadows.
You are everywhere.

Happy Birthday

What do I have for you today? Our years have been spelled out by p-o-v-e-r-t-y. I should stop trying to send you gifts I can barely afford; stop pretending I could even cook up your favorite spaghetti, or give you that branded hood you wanted so badly.
I have to be more upright; more down-to-earth. All I have are words. Let’s sit down and count the years we’ve been together. I still remember the precise hour when you arrived; I can reduce that entire year to one eventful second—only one second—that changed my life.
I can start at the dawning of the early signs. It was quarter to one in the afternoon on New Year’s Day of 1993 there at an old Tres de Abril apartment. I could not forget the bright red cushions on the rattan chair. Facing the wooden bookstand, I was glancing at the clock, timing the pain every five minutes, seeing your father’s anxious face outside the screen door. He had rushed in from his rented house to take part in this moment of great drama: The rush to the hospital on a taxi, the panic on his face, moments of exhilaration as I was led the way to a mysterious chamber filled with women’s screams.
My first encounter with snotty hospital attendants and edema, a form of women’s torture, angry voices scolding women giving birth to men; bloody sheets and writhing bodies on the beds next to mine, women moaning in great pain.
Sorry to give you these ugly images on your 17th birthday. But ugliness surrounded that moment of great beauty. If I fail to remember this, you wouldn’t understand half your life: You were raised in great pain.
Your father only came in when all the blood had been washed away. He actually missed the whole story.

This little corner at the mall

12 graves

The place was deserted when the group arrived. But we can still see the telltale signs of the day before: The footprints on the fresh, sandy earth; the flowers, once fresh, beginning to wilt; the streamers soiled by the wind.
The sun burning furiously on my temple, I took the camera to frame the 12 newest graves. Twelve, I heard Richel say in a car on our way here, was the highest number of dead ever buried in the history of this cemetery. Behind the lens, a photojournalist once told me, one should detach oneself from the scene one was about to record; one should stop being herself and put ones self at the service of an image. So, as I crouched to frame the 12 graves, I was a bit puzzled by sounds. A sniffling or two coming at intervals and in increasing regularity, as each journalist crouched before each grave to offer a single flower, or light a candle. Until I put down the camera to take a candle to light, I never understood that sound.Until I, too, crouched on to the nearest grave, and caught sight of a name—just a name—and realized she was a woman. She must have been looking forward to do a story that day, aboard the convoy that left Buluan town in Maguindanao on its way to the capital town of Shariff Aguak; after an imam said a prayer at the house of the politician set to run for governor; after they took breakfast and went aboard the convoy, smiling--maybe, laughing--as they heard women in the clan saying, ‘women should be given more space in the leadership’ of that province because they can do many wonderful things simply because they were women. It suddenly crossed my mind that this woman journalist, whose name I happened to read, whose grave I happened to see, had left behind a son or two, a daughter or an eight month old baby, and may not have known what awaited them along the road to Shariff Aguak. She may not have known or believed there was this reigning culture of impunity in our midst, and that press freedom in this country was merely skin-deep. Did she secretly love covering that story? Was she thinking it was a big scoop?But there was no longer a story to cover that day. Over a hundred men armed with the most powerful weaponry under the command of a warlord clan who had powerful links with Malacanang, had killed the story right on the road to Shariff Aguak, in an isolated lot in Ampatuan town. They tried to kill the story by killing the representatives, lawyers and supporters of the political clan who wanted to challenge the ruling governor. They killed the journalists so that no one could write about it. They buried everything under the crunch of a backhoe, thinking that in burying the bodies, everything can easily be forgotten and everything will be business as usual in the province ruled by terror.
But the sheer monstrosity of what they did was a story that could not be contained; not by the perimeters of their power, not by the bounds of their territory. It was beyond words to describe; and because it was indescribable, it escaped language, itself. It escaped their hold and spread to the remotest corners of the world.
No one could probably know the extent of the horrors that those killed in the carnage suffered—not one among those journalists was able to file a story. But they continue to speak to us in many other ways; and the task of writing that story fell upon us, who remained.

I won't weep for the women

I won't weep for the women who died in the carnage in Ampatuan town in Maguindanao; I won't weep. I won't weep to satisfy their murderers, whose brutality and ruthlessness shock people around the world. I won't weep for the journalists who died, whose names have joined the growing lists of journalists killed in the Philippines. I won't weep for the culture of impunity and the reign of terror in my country.I won't weep for the government's reluctance to punish the perpetrators. I won't weep for the unholy alliance of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the political clan that puts her in power.
Sorry, I won't weep. I won't weep because the victims deserve more than what anyone's stupid tears can bring. They deserve justice and we, who remained--we who are here--, should see to it that it must be served. We shall never settle for less.

Few minutes before Madness

Just need to link this here before everything turns to chaos and my life will turn upside down.
Following the carnage in Maguindanao that killed at least 57 unarmed people (as of the press time the number continues to climb), members the international media group IFEX condemned the killing, describing it as a "crime of such scale and horror that is incomparable to anything we have seen."

Women's fiction in Asia

It’s sinful, I know. And besides, I already have a copy of Tony Nieva’s “Pasilyo 8” somewhere in my files at home, safely tucked in a folder with Leoncio Deriada’s “Road to Mawab” and the third name, I could not yet remember. Yes, they were the top three winners of the 1981 Asiaweek short story writing competition in that decade when Asiaweek still allot some of its pages to fiction. The magazine folded up two decades later, though; shortly after it reformatted itself as Asia’s business magazine.
I can’t remember now, if it was Ja who first told me about the Asiaweek fiction competition at the time when I was so crazy about fiction. (Until now, I still am, can’t you see?) But in 2000, while drifting inside the Silliman University library, I found the Asiaweek copy that featured these top three winners, and made sure to keep a copy.
Sorry. Actually, I could not remember exactly how I got that Asiaweek copy. Maybe, it was not a library copy after all. Maybe, it was only one of Ja’s old copies, remnants of his Asiaweek days for he could be that “sentimental.” He used to keep at home all those old Asiaweek issues where his stories appeared—but this was before he decided to live like Henry David Thoreau and cast away all his belongings (at our expense) and donated all his books and magazines to the Davao city library. But just to accompany me in my lonely journey to writing fiction, I decided to keep those three old Asiaweek winners among my files at home; and although I might find it hard to locate them now, without turning the whole place upside down, I have not forgotten yet that I still have them among my files.
So when I found a few copies of “Prizewinning Asian Fiction” (edited by Leon Comber) prominently displayed on the shelf of the National Bookstore—I almost went berserk. (Am I exaggerating?) The book features all the winning writers from 1981 to 1988. I felt I needed very badly to read the women!For among those fiercely vying for the top Asiaweek prize, were women (some identify themselves as housewives or someone from the academe, whose mastery over language and form had surprised Asiaweek editors. Of the 26 winners (some of them won twice in different years, of course), only nine were women, a small but nevertheless encouraging number considering how women have always been silenced from writing fiction close to a hundred years after Virginia Woolf wrote “A Room of Ones’ Own.” So, just to console myself because I don’t get to write fiction anymore (this semester will be gobbled up by my master’s project), I will treat myself to reading Niaz Zaman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Evelyn D. Tan, Minfong Ho. Claralice Hanna, Fanny Haydee Bautista Llego, Ovidia Yu, Nina Sibal and Nalla Tan.

The Visit

Deep in the night, I dreamt of a woman sticking her brown elbow inside the front window of our apartment. She was trying to open the latch. When I turned to look, she called a strange name, a certain Mrs. B—(I could no longer remember)—so, I immediately called Ma, who in that dream was sleeping in my room as if she lived there. But looking back now, I thought the name that the woman was calling was a strange name, it couldn’t have been Ma’s. It could have been somebody who used to live in an apartment where we stayed, somebody who was a friend of the woman. But in the dream, when the woman called and saw me seeing her trying to open the latch, she said I needed not open the door, she only wanted us to know she was in distress; and she began telling me, half crying, that the landlady had kicked them out. She said something about the landlady suing her. She needed help, her four small children, around her, listening.I saw all of them outside the window she was trying to open. It was then that I suddenly realized it was Ja, not Ma, who was sleeping in the room. I decided not to wake Ja (who’d surely get mad for being interrupted in his sleep). I decided to talk to the woman, so, I began to open the door, drowsily reaching up to the latch, swaying in my half-sleep.
But then, as the door broke free, I was suddenly exposed to the bright white light outside and the woman was gone. It was then, that I realized the woman was an apparition; and suddenly everything turned into a nightmare. As usual, an unusual force whisked my body and sent it to the floor; I was unable to move. I tried to scream and when I managed to let my voice out, I awoke, feeling the crushing, tingling sensation that only a stupefying nightmare can bring.
I told Sean, once when I chanced upon him waking up that night, that I didn’t want to go back to sleep anymore for fear that the nightmare might come back. In the morning, he asked me what the dream was all about. Why it got me so scared. I told him about the woman. “It doesn’t sound so scary at all,” he said, in his own child wisdom. But I was totally shaken by the dream. The following night, I told Karl about it. He laughed when he saw me making the sign of the cross because he said I was supposed to be a pagan, [yes, i wanted to be a witch!] and there I was, making the sign of the cross. Why was I so easily scared by a simple dream? He asked. I said it’s because I could not understand its meaning. Until now, when I get to think of it, it still gives me the creeps. Who was that woman in distress? Why did she visit me in my sleep?

Light and Shadows

Now that the multimedia class is over; a class I had survived despite my most rudimentary piece of equipment, my slow and memory-challenged laptop, most of all; I needed to thank everyone who had made my work a success (despite its being a disaster.) At last, I decided to remove my disastrous video here, (it was not only because of poor planning that the images failed to match the story that unfolded, it was also shortage of time, lack of gumption, the vacillation of will. For, imagine making a long form documentary in a minute’s notice! While trying to master all those audio and video editing software I handled for the first time!) So, for the benefit of all of us, I decided to remove that piece of disaster to put in its place the only shot I liked in the entire video. It was a shadow cast by a worshipper on a wooden bench inside the small chapel in Mayo, a sitio about 30 minutes ride from Poblacion, Columbio.
For there was nothing I loved better than shooting shadows! This shadow was shot during what Ja always referred to as the “magic hour,” when the sun is already 45 to 30 degrees to the horizon, its yellowish tint saturate the colors on earth, sending even the most ordinary thing aglow, making everything looks so special.
Earlier, we had left the perfectly-decent, concrete church in Columbio. When we arrived, the small wooden chapel on the hill was awash with sunlight. The view of the surrounding hills and mountains was magical from the inside, framed by the chapel door; but something had prevented me from aiming the camera and pressing the shutter. Fr. Peter Geremia, PIME, was saying mass and I was worried that if I aimed my camera at the door, I would meet the rebuke of the faithful—! So, there! That was how I missed that magical door shot as I, instead, aimed my camera on the floor to record the shadows.

At home in Columbio

Over twenty four years after the killing of Italian priest Fr. Tulio Favali in a remote town of Tulunan in Cotabato, Southern Philippines, the Italian-born priest who was the target of his killers find a home in the Moro-influenced town of Columbio, Sultan Kudarat. Fr. Peter Geremia, the survivor, talks about the place he loves.



A Look Back

The anti-Moro and anti-Communist fanatic group Ilaga (rat) were on a killing rampage that day of April 11, 1985, looking for Fr. Peter Geremia when they found the Italian priest Fr. Tulio Favali responding to a distress call from a Tulunan church leader.
They burnt his motorcycle and when he came out of the church leader's house to ask why, one of the Manero Brothers, the leader of the fanatic group, asked, "Do you want your head blown off?" and shot him.
Afterwards, the elder brother, Norberto Manero alias Kumander Bucay, told the triggerman, "Is that all you do when you kill a priest?"
So, the killer poured all the bullets on to Fr. Favali's body and then, stepped on the body afterwards.
Following the People Power revolution in 1986 that ousted the dictatorship of former President Marcos, Favali's killers served their terms in jail.
But in 2007, Norberto Manero was released on Presidential pardon. He immediately went to the Kidapawan diocese to seek forgiveness from the man he wanted to kill 20 years back and lit candles on the grave of his victim. This site also tells a story about the killer's repentance, although much of his story here does not jibe with the survivors' and witnesses' accounts of what really happened on that ignominious day.

Durian time in Davao

Cheap durian has been flooding Davao streets for days. At every turn of the corner, people feast on the sweet, rich-textured fruit as prices plunged down to a dirt-cheap level of P20 to P30 a kilo. Prices used to hover at P80 to P100 a kilo before fresh harvests started coming from the farms about three weeks ago.
“We’re hardly getting any sleep,” says Susan Malayaw, a durian seller in a family rented block of stalls which opens 24 hours on a Rizal street corner. “Customers flock to our stores happy since prices are down, but we’re not earning anything much.”
“We’re earning better when the fruit was scarce,” said Judith VillaAbrille, at the next stall. “Few customers used to come but at least, the price was much higher.”
Even the City Agriculture Office admits to an oversupply. “We wish some people will invest in a big processing plant to absorb the glut in the market,” says Rocelio Tabay, city agriculturist. “It will stabilize prices.”
But whether prices are high or low, customers keep coming. “More people drop by at night, than during daytime,” Malayaw says. “Most people who buy in big boxes are travelers on their way out of Davao or people who spent the whole night in bars and restaurants.”
She expects the deluge of supply to last till November. “When we get tired, we just look for a place to lie down around here to get some sleep.”
In different parts of the city, men are emptying truckload of durians, hurling them onto waiting baskets.
Just a piece of advice to those who can’t stand the smell, though: You might have trouble getting anywhere. The entire city practically reeks of durian.
DURIAN BOY (left) quits school hoping he can save enough money working at a durian factory. A man (above) shows off his display.
SLEEPLESS. Durian seller Susan Malayaw (left) hardly gets enough sleep selling durian for 24 hours in a streetcorner in Davao. She says more people come at night than at daytime.

Durian time in Davao

THE HEAVIER, THE MERRIER. A man (below) weighing durian in a scale while a boy (left) sells durian at Magsaysay Park.Listen to podcast

Durian Time in Davao

Dirt cheap durian floods Davao city streets because of over supply.

Students' lightning protest in Davao

Student says no country could develop under US control

Karlos Manlupig, spokesperson of the League of Filipino Students in Davao.

Student activists burn US flag in Davao

Chanting, "US imperialist, the number one terrorist," student activists burn the US flag in front of the Ateneo de Davao University campus to protest the continued presence of US troops in Mindanao. Students demand for the scrapping of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which allowed US troops in the Philippines to conduct combat war exercises with Filipino soldiers. Led by the militant League of Filipino Students, they expressed outrage over President Arroyo's "frontline" stance in the US war on terror, in exchange for military aid from the United States.

Life at "Onse"

My favorite place assignment for Dave Clark's multimedia class.

Yellow’s passing

When I caught a glimpse of Cory Aquino from my bus window during the snap election campaign somewhere in Kidapawan many years ago, I was still 16 on my way home from school after dropping by at the Kidapawan diocese where they showed some pictures. Now, as I heard about her leaving, I became aware that my little boy is 16, and I looked back to those tumultuous years, wondering how I first became aware of something about to burst, of something about to explode violently like a dam.

It was my heart. Silenced and deprived of “fact” all through the Martial Law years, I felt a creeping sense of disgust at the pictures I saw at the Kidapawan diocese that day. They showed dead bodies on the road; and one of those I did not recognize was the Italian priest Fr. Tulio Favali. Those pictures had the color of blood. But it was only much, much later, when I’d begin to associate the way that I felt with the right colors. Right at that moment, I thought the color was yellow.

So, when I heard the crowd chanting “Cory” that day, waving the Laban sign as the convoy of yellow and green passed by, I could feel my heart lurch. Laban was (and still is) the Tagalog word for ‘fight.’ I could hear the pulse of other passengers as we watched the passing convoy in silence.

Now they tied yellow ribbons in front of hotel facades to mark her passing. As the jeepney I took rolled by, I became aware of the yellow bells and the yellow marigolds outside the SSS building along JP Laurel street; of some rickety yellow car overtaking us; of the bright yellow scarf that the teenage girl seated across from me wore. Even the gibbous moon up in the sky was yellow. But in yellow, I feel an acute sense of absence; an acute sense of something missing.

Now, it’s all up to me to find out what it is!

Media's ideological bias

Our Media Law professor Mukund said this was not what he saw when he observed the press in the Philippines. Submitted as a paper in the Media Law class we took with the rest of the ACFJ fellows batch 2008 in the first semester of SY 2008-2009:

If media culture in the Philippines is plagued with ideological bias, it is not yet the “liberal left” bias that Marlin Maddoux talked about in the book chapter,” Free Press or Propaganda? How the Media Distort the Truth,” but more on what Noam Chomsky said about the corporate media’s hunger for profit that media oftentimes become an unwitting tool of those in power to “manufacture” the consent of the public.
In fact, one only has to watch five minutes of prime time TV in the Philippines and see how one gets bombarded by the conventional, subtly masochistic and sadly (some remnants of) colonial worldview.
The media oftentimes take the standpoint of powerful institutions (corporate, government and otherwise) and wittingly or unwittingly package this as unquestioned Truths.
That’s why, I consider it a good thing when liberal-left ideas, such as the concept of press freedom and media independence, creep into the consciousness of the mainstream press.
I say “creep in” because these liberal-left ideas have never been so “esconced” in the mainstream press despite the Philippines’ long tradition of press freedom.
The country’s tradition of press freedom that dated back to its struggle against its former colonizers over a century ago, only asserts and reasserts itself, depending on the political situation in the country.
For a long time, it has been considered a “given,” that the Philippine media is considered the “freest in Asia.” And yet, it has not been able to use this press freedom (coupled by advances in technology) to keep its citizens well-informed.
Most often, the media in the Philippines have become spokespersons and mouthpiece of those in power.
In between the country’s past, when it was not under the grip of a political turmoil that marked the time of the dictatorship of former President Marcos and now during the time of President Arroyo, the media as an institution was in a lull, driven by the ideology of market forces.
For instance, the left liberal idea of press freedom was very strong during the struggle against the dictatorship of Marcos in the 1970s and the 1980s, but rather weak during the market-oriented policies espoused by former President Ramos.
During the time of Ramos, the media (except for the few alternative presses) had carried the government’s standpoint hook, line and sinker on such policies as deregulation, privatization and the country’s supposed role and participation in the global free trade era.
There have never been in-depth reports coming from the mainstream media during the time of Ramos that challenged this government line. Except for those coming from few alternative presses, of course, most of the reports never questioned policies on deregulation, the privatization and even the country’s prospects in the liberalized trade era under the World Trade Organization (WTO).
It was a pity that the media at this time only mouthed what the government was saying. Yet, the impact of what was never discussed before is now staring us in the face.
For instance, the government’s classical WTO line during the time of Ramos was, the Philippines should only produce goods that the country has a ‘comparative advantage,” compared to other countries.
Both the country’s top industry players and government trade officials were saying that the country should only produce goods which local producers can produce fast and cheap and in better quality than those in other countries so that they can compete in the world market.
In other words, they were saying that the country should not bother producing goods which take much longer time--and more costly--to produce.
The Philippines would rather import those goods from other countries, which can produce them cheaper.
The country’s rice problem had sprung from this policy, which the media failed to check at the earliest stage of its inception.
Because of this policy of importing “cheap” rice, the government neglected its own agriculture. The country has become so dependent on other countries for the supply of this critical staple food, increasing the country’s vulnerability to price fluctuation in the world market and in the end, threatening the country’s food security.
This is an example how media’s bias for the powerful policy makers, trade and industry players has undermined its prime and important obligation of informing the public.
The Bill of Rights, Section 7 of the Philippine Constitution provides for the public’s right to know, by recognizing the “right of the people to information on matters of public concern.”
However, this provision in the Constitution is oftentimes set aside and forgotten in the day to day operations of the media. It’s only very rarely that citizens invoke this Constitutional provision to assert their right.
Government has also come up with policies and statutes that seek to block transparency of public records; like the Executive Order 464 that bar Cabinet and other government officials from testifying in Congress without the President’s consent.
Invoking national security issues, the government also came up with the Human Security Act, which also restricts media’s role in informing the public. Under this law, the media interviewing terrorist suspects can also be held liable and guilty of “acts of terrorism.”
At present, the Freedom for Information Act, which will require government offices to make available public documents in a matter of days, is still pending in Congress.
But the rise of institutions in the country fighting for press freedom, media independence and ethical practice, has ensured that the media become conscious of its role not only as watchdog, but also as an institution that can give voice to the voiceless in society.
Slowly, it has dawned upon most of the media practitioners to uphold their independence and police their ranks for abuses, rather than relegate this duty to some interest groups and powers-that-be who might subject the media to their own agenda.
In the Philippines, however, what has been denied from the people by the elitist Philippine media always finds expressions in political cartoons, which is the easiest and most accessible reading fare among the masses.
For instance, more people savor the biting humor of “Pugad Baboy” which expresses wry commentary about the political situation in the country in the most humorous way.
I don’t think that these political cartoons are “less biting” than those in other countries. They reflect Filipino humor and the country’s political situation that the masses can easily identify.
Despite of and amidst of the killing of journalists in the country, I can say that the political cartoons—dating from the time of Marcos to the Hello Garci tapes under Arroyo and onwards--are biting critiques of today’s Philippine society.
But it’s a different story altogether for television sitcoms.
In the Philippines, it’s very rare for television sitcoms to push the liberal left agenda. In fact, television sitcoms are still tainted with conventional, machosist bias and conservative standpoint.
The dominant network culture, as Noam Chomsky said, is market driven and is influenced by both corporate advertisers and top policy makers in government.
Despite its relative political freedom, though, the media in the Philippines do not, as a general rule, make outright fun of religious conservatives. As a rule, majority of media practitioners grew up and are still part of the predominant Catholic culture, hence, the subconscious reluctance to displease someone with so-called religious authority.
In fact, the marrying of corporate interest with that of the predominant conservative culture have their expression during Christmas season, when everything from soap operas to variety shows and public affairs programs tend to encourage buying spree for supposedly “gift giving” among the public, even amidst the increasing poverty and declining purchasing power of the Filipinos.
In this example, I understand what Maddoux was saying about the media using “repetition,” “selective reporting” and the “conscious dispensing with perspective” to promote the ideology of the market.

At a loss for words

To someone who inspired me enough to write this poem sequence--a set of poems that explore a single complication, like what's usually done in a novel, but this time, applied to poetry--as our untiring teacher-poet Allan Popa made us see; he who opened my eyes to paradox and ambiguity as we sat in the faculty conference room of the Filipino department on the third floor of ADMU's Horacio dela Costa building while outside the window, the leaves and gnarled branches of acacia filter the heat of summer. To my roommate Pratish, a natural poet who can recognize poetry by the sound of it even if it is in a foreign tongue she doesn't understand, to the people close and not so close to me who allow me to "see," to friends who have been tolerant of my long absences, disappearances and resurfacing, to the young writers of Matanglawin who sat in that class through thick and thin, while I - always at a loss for words in that "other" language they call Filipino but which is actually Tagalog - grappled with images and never let go.



SIMBAHANG BATO
(a poem sequence)


Gising

Inang nakaratay sa loob ng silid,
ama at tanong ng mga kapatid,
iniligpit sa isip
habang ika’y sumahimpapawid

Dito sa kabilang daigdig

Hinahanap mo si Kristo sa kasukalan ng Tondo
nang abutan ka ng Martial Law
at pilit iniligpit sa loob ng silid. Sa dilim ng curfew
naaaninaw mo ang mga anino
ng maraming inang gising na gising
sa iyong pagdating.

“Blood of Martyrs”

Matagal nang patay ang mga santo
ngunit ganoon pa rin kung patiwarik na ibitin
ang isang taong ayaw umamin

Isang timba ng tubig, naghihintay sa ibaba
naghihintay sa nahihintakutang mukha
doon ilulublob pansamantala
upang ilang saglit na mag-agaw-hininga.

Ngunit bago tuluyang lagutan ng hangin
hahayaang huminga sa pagkakabitin
hahayaang humingal ng iilang saglit
bago muling ilublob nang paulit-ulit
pabalikbalik ang halik sa tubig

hanggang wala nang maikumpisal—kundi tubig.

May Likha

Nakatagpo mo Siya sa pagitan
ng mga tula ng pagdurusa.

Nakatagpo mo Siya sa
pagitan
ng mga tula ng
pagdurusa.

Nakatagpo mo Siya
sa pagitan ng mga tula
ng pagdurusa.

Simbahang Bato

Sa loob ng simbahang bato
nakahilera ang mga santo
Naninigas sa pagkakaupo
ang nagmamanman sa may pinto
habang inuusal mo
ang banal na panalangin

Ayaw na yatang magising
ng pulubing nahihimbing

Damang dama mo ang mga mata
sa mga dinding na semento
Papaluhod na lumalakad
sa altar na ginto
ang kay raming may bagabag sa puso.

Pinagmasdan mo ang dugo
sa mga paang nakapako

unti-unting natutuyo.

Tinatawag

Kay rami nang patay sa liblib
na sitio ng New Panay
Patuloy silang tumatawag ng tulong,
kumakatok sa simbahan, nagtatanong.

Nasaan ang Diyos? Takot din ba siya
sa Cafgu? At di mo alam ang isasagot

Sa pinid na pinto at mga bintana
binubuklat mo ang aklat
pilit inunawa ang bawat salita
pilit inunawa kung bakit
ang Diyos ay biglang nawawala.

OB List

Mula nang mapabalita na kasama
ang iyong pangalan sa humahabang listahan

mga pangalang isa-isang buburahin
sa listahan hindi ka na mapalagay

Paano maninimbang sa pagitan
ng kanan at kaliwa ang aklat
ng magandang Balita?

Alagad

Balitang-balita ko pa
kung paano mo pinatakbo
ang luma mong Isuzu
sa gitna ng daang pa-Cotabato
nang mapansin ang mga motorsiklong
sumusunod sa iyo.

Ba’t mo pa kasi sinundan si Kristo
sa bako-bakong landas ng Columbio
upang dalawin ang mga musmos
sa mga dampang naghihikahos
sa mga bundok na pinupuyos ng takot at poot?

Kung naghintay ka lang
sa loob ng kumbento
upang pagpira-pirasuhin ang tinapay tuwing Linggo—

Di na sana sumabog ang matigas mong ulo.