I’d like to imagine

you

were just in a vacation,

having fun

with friends and family,

not lovers.

I’d like to imagine

you

were arrested in our bed,

daydreaming

of things here and to come,

and not gone.

I’d like to imagine

you

were in some kind of heaven,

white with wings,

floating about like angels,

not burning (out).

I say, not everything has been said about Maguindanao.

Really? You’ve been to Maguindanao?

Yes, I have. Two Christmases ago. 2008.

Scary shit, man! How was it there?

It was great. The scenery was really unique, to say the least.

Do you have pictures?

Nah, we forgot to bring our camera.

Too bad. You might have had the chance to shoot something cool! Like Ampatuan’s mansion!

Haha! No, there’s not much of those there.

What’s there? Dead bodies?

Haha! No… Well, I didn’t see any.

I mean, they say this Ampatuan’s been a bigshot for a long time and he’s been doing these murders since like forever.

Yeah, I heard that, too. Sledge hammer?

Yeah! The teacher he beat up with a sledge hammer! Fuckin’ crazy, man!

The nerve. We weren’t really supposed to go. We went there by accident.

Got kidnapped? Haha!

We were supposed to go to GenSan but we didn’t make the right turn. We were going for Pacquiao’s mansion and more tuna. We came from Davao.

Haha! How could you make a wrong turn to a different province? Crazy shit, man.

You see, there were no signs there, no street lights, but the road was good. Too good that we thought we were still on the right way to GenSan.

Really? No signs?

Yeah, that’s Mindanao for you. They don’t even have transmission lines like the ones you see in NLEX. The tall electric posts which are shaped like a girl’s dress, they don’t have that there.

No electricity? Fuckin’ natives, man. Haha!

There’s electricity, but it’s hard to get.

No fun! So, what else is there aside from hard-to-get electricity? Haha!

Well, there’s one Jollibee for the whole city with its dashboard menu plastered with huge black letters, screaming, “WITH PORK” for every burger they sell.

Muslims?

Yeah, they’re allergic or something. Like they’ll go to hell.

Well, it’s hell to live without pork.

Yeah. And most of their gasoline stations only sold Diesel.

Oh shit! So, if you’re on something else, you’re done for?

Yeah. And instead of your usual church, there were mosques.

With the moon and star?

Yeah. Like for every five kilometers, a mosque. And for every two kilometers, a military checkpoint.

Scary shit, man.

But there were no soldiers guarding anyway. You just had to zip through them.

So what’s the use?

Nothing, just for formality’s sake. They said a “war” was going on there. And there were waiting sheds there in the middle of nowhere with “US AID” painted on them.

US AID? Bomb shelters?

Even the schools had the US AID logo painted on them. It’s like some US assistance program.

Cool! Any Americans?

Didn’t see any. It’s nice there, though. Look around you and you’ll see something amazing.

Yeah, mosques, checkpoints, guns, and dead people, eh?

Not really. But one thing I found really amazing there were their rice fields.

We have that here, too. Rice fields. Hectares and hectares in Pampanga and Tarlac and Tagaytay.

Yeah, but they had it different there.

Why?

Everywhere you looked, all you saw were rich, green rice fields.

Same thing in Pampanga?

Even better. It wasn’t as hot there as it is in Pampanga. It’s like a sea of green. Like God only had a green Crayola that day, and colored the fields like he was a kindergarten kid. With strokes spilling over, up and down, left and right.

God grew cheap on those Muslims, eh? Got too lazy to get some other color, eh?

I don’t know, but it was all green. Like you were on a boat, but instead of the sea, you were on land. Green land. You’ll get choked with it. Like water. ‘Cause everywhere I turned, to the mountains, to the flatlands, the color was green.

What’s gotten into your mind? Green-minded now, eh?

Nothing. I guess I just understood why those farmers kept going MILF, Abu Sayaff shit and all.

Haha! Planning to join them already?

No, it’s just amazing. You see, maybe those lands won’t be as green if they only watered it with water. Maybe that’s where their pigs went. Spilling pig meat and blood to fatten the land. Cool, eh?

Freaky shit, those Muslim farmers are, eh?

He seemed asleep in his dark blue stroller, with its shade pulled down, and his feet propped out of it, relaxed.  Out of view from his aunt pushing the stroller from behind, nobody knew how he was doing underneath the shade of his stroller. He was dying.

It was too late when he was found lifeless by his mother. Coming from a different direction, his mother saw how he has passed from brown to a beaten up color. She rushed and knelt down in front of the stroller, starting to call out with a name. His name, perhaps.

His skin grew spots of black in his cheeks, in his arms, and in his legs. His lips had a thick froth of yellowish saliva. His eyes were less than half lit. He was motionless. And upon feeling his chest, his mother knew, he wasn’t breathing.

His mom and his aunt kept screaming, calling him out a dozen times with a piercing pitch and loudness, patting him on his chest, on his cheeks, on his arms, everywhere. She grabbed him out of the stroller, in panic, throwing the baby carriage off to the ground, upside down. Like a ragdoll, she slung the kid onto her arms, dummy motion, making no response.

Her eyes bent to a frown as her face curled into wrinkles. Her teeth bared as her siren yelled emergency. Sweat built up in less than a count. She ran with great urgency as she carried her son shoulder-level to her body. Help was what she wanted. Something to save her son. Here she was, his distressed mother.

Everyone was startled. I didn’t know where to go or whom to ask for help or where I can come to play a part. I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a working phone to make a call, I’m not familiar with anyone in the situation, I did not know what to do! A security guard came by and radioed for help. They ran. Everyone ran. I felt that I did run. I needed to run. Maybe, I ran in place. And after running, the scene disappeared faster than it had appeared.

Only his upside down stroller remained as a reminder of what happened. Only its wheels were moving, rolling against thin air. Perhaps, it was the only witness in the boy’s death, since nobody was ever sure how he was doing except the carriage’s linen upon which he rested on.

Perhaps, he survived and everyone bore witness on how he was saved.

Legend: The orange part is for the head, the blue is for the rest of the body, and the yellow part is for the feet/other dirty part.

You denied it, you were drunk. Time was taking its toll on you. You were ageing, not getting any younger, and the absence of a wild was hanging you out to dry.

You desired a tonic to magically bring you back to the days when life was so carefree. You wanted to go back to those pastel colored mornings when staring at a boy wasn’t a crime just yet.

And there came Josh.

You stared at him and found that life free of those cares. You wished, hopelessly desiring, that staring at a boy, just for this instant, would not imprison you.

And you couldn’t quite put your finger on it but you knew you’ve touched him before. Something told you that he was there in your childhood, playing in the tall castles of your playful imagination. He remained a memory of those days, trapped in the time capsule of half-drunkenness and nostalgia.

But now, he was here. Now, you were home.

You begged for home to stay a little longer.

***

This piece is inspired by Kor and Josh’s recently discovered pre-school pictures.

Painting a line to strictly demarcate Philippine Literature as the ones made by Filipinos is logical, but doing so raises the argument of Nature vs. Nurture. What, then, of Filipino-Chinese Literature, of Charleson Ong, and other works made by Filipinos not by blood? Language, also, proves to be a credible wall, but an easily crossable wall at that, considering that we include a number of works in Spanish and English part of our canon of Philippine Literature. Although some radicals push for the utter termination of anything not written in Filipino from our Literature, truth is that this will cripple Philippine Literature, starting with the godly Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. We can also romanticize that a run for our native roots will fill our Literature with the “Filipino-ness” it is looking for, but truth be told, a lot of Filipinos have not lived a day as a rural or indigenous Filipino. For example, a story set in the Philippines, say, the movie A Gentleman and an Officer starring Richard Gere, is set in Olongapo in the early 1950’s, but that does not make it part of our Literature. Even the inclusion of certain Filipino traditions, such as the Bayanihan or the town fiesta for the patron saint, are faulty once we consider the truth that it is gradually being distorted by Western ideas such as commercialism and relevantly, today, electioneering, and other –isms of a world which is not distinctly ours. To add to this, the presence and essence of these Filipino traditions, indeed, are hardly found today.

The inclusion of these elements do not equate to a black and white verdict that a certain piece of Philippine Literature is indeed filled with that “Filipino-ness”, no matter how much Filipino color these elements add. In painting a picture of the Filipino, there is a certain depth, not simply achievable by the addition of a jeepney, or naming the painting something as Filipino as “Balut”, or if a Filipino painted it or not. It may, perhaps, add a little Filipino flavor to it, but it is not exactly what I believe “Filipino-ness” is about.

Given these possibilities I have discounted in boxing “Filipino-ness”, arguing that the quality is deeper than simply flavor, I am left to include no physical or obvious criteria for defining the trait. However, I cannot leave the trait to a euphemism of intangible feelings, mere gut feel, or whatnot.

Something quite noticeable in reading Philippine Literature is that more than any other piece of Literature, it relates to a Filipino more easily. Whether it be close to home, as Manuel Arguilla’s pieces are, or something set in a distant land, such as Nick Joaquin’s A Woman With Two Navels, Philippine Literature translates easier, arguably deeper, to us, Filipinos, than the ones Mario Puzo creates in The Godfather, or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Some of us, Filipinos, may want to be Don Vito Corleone’s or Lord Voldemort’s, but we cannot erase the fact that sometimes, we already are Connie Escobar’s or that wet, seductive temptress in Arguilla’s Midsummer.

This vicarious emotion is something I attribute to the presence of “Filipino-ness” in these pieces. This emotion is something we can further dissect into our problematic search for identity. I believe that Filipino-ness is not simply an allusion to all things Filipino, but a relation with our struggles in finding where we situate ourselves, being Filipinos, in segments of our lives. The Filipino-ness of Philippine Literature lays in the How’s and Why’s we, being Filipinos, tackle the Who’s, Where’s and When’s of What’s. In short, the Filipino-ness of Literature puts our Filipino Identity into question as it faces up to itself. Literature gives this power to continuously allow a search for our Filipino Identity. Philippine Literature presents a mirror of how we, as Filipinos, imagine ourselves to be.

This does not mean that Literature should always have a certain thesis on how we behave. In itself, Literature reveals something human as it is a product of humans (and humans alone). Consequently, this entails that a “rivalry” between Art for Art’s Sake and Art for Nation is not a necessary argument since both causes boil down to a cause of dwelling on Identity. No matter how masturbatory Art for Art’s Sake is, it creates a certain character on how an Identity perceives art. Jose Garcia Villa’s Emperor’s New Sonnet pronounces certain mastery and brilliance a man of our nation has of the English language. Inversely, no matter how objective Art for Nation is in problematizing how society reacts under tensions or conflicts, it cannot be wholly removed from the purpose of artistically creating an Identity. A dozen books by F. Sionil Jose, attached to a nationalistic theme, cannot be removed from the fact that it remains in the domain of the Arts, and its beauty in form and content will always be a matter for concern. Whatever the motives are for creating literary pieces, a critical reading on Literature will always result to something about an Identity. In the case of Philippine Literature, it will always result to something about our Identity. It is Literature’s role to present that Identity to its readers and writers.

One, therefore, asks whether this role is restraining since it boxes our Identity in its forms. However, this is not the approach that should be taken. We cannot escape history and its stories, but that doesn’t mean we do not have free will. We do not box ourselves in the Identity presented to us by Literature. Rather, Literature presents our Identity in a box. One looks at it from afar and one thinks of how one goes about this box. Through Literature, we are given that choice — a view free from its constructs.

Literature does not work on its own, though. It is doubly-edged, presenting both a window of opportunities, and a window pane too difficult to break open. Its purpose for society is to be written and to be read. It is the lack of the accomplishment of the latter that makes Literature nowadays no longer have the power it used to hold. As mentioned, Philippine Literature does not need to focus its strength on either Art for Nation or Art for Art’s Sake since however it is aimed, it hits on the question of our Identity. It only needs to be written well, and to be read just as well.

Reading Philippine Literature, however, is an entirely different story.