I miss my mom. Even without the umbilical cord, I still feel connected to her, connected to the woman who gave me life. I don't know why this is so but I have this longing to go back to the womb that spawned me. Probably because they could never cut off the true umbilical cord - the mysterious cord that connects the mothers to their offsping psychologically, spiritually, emotionally and physiologically.

I miss her so much: I miss her touch, her sweet voice, her angelic smile, her motherly care. I miss her culinary attempts: her adobo, sinigang, etc., etc., etc. I miss her foray into cross-stitch, which she abandoned for good kasi sumasakit yung mata niya (at naduduling). She would start some pattern then would force me to finish it (kung di ko lang ikaw nanay, ewan kona lang). She would pick up another then I would finish it until we had a wall full of it.

Most of all, I miss her motherly (and sometimes weird) wisdom.

Since I am studying here in Manila, we only see each other every vacation (and sometimes once a year depending on our state of finances). Nevertheless, I would always see to it that I spend quality time with my parents during vacation. We always talk about anything under the sun except of course my lovelife which I don't share even to my parents (probably because I'm that too secretive when it comes to lovelife) and my academic life. Most of the time, we talk about politics and national issues. And our breakfast table is our battleground where we volley arguments back and forth, where we shoot down each other, where we squabble and bicker just to gain that inch (mind you, we would die for that inch), where we interpolate, dissect, analyze, and criticize issues.

Through this verbal intercourse I became more analytical and critical. I don't accept everything at face value. I become cynical and suspicious to everything, to everyone, and to my surroundings. I always question everything, even authority, even God (note: my parents are devout Catholics while I am a theist who have atheistic tendencies).

Through this, mother imparts me her wisdom, little by little. Like Yoda teaching the young Luke Skywalker. She would pass on centuries old wisdom to me, pice by piece. And everytime she would impart her wisdom, I become more and more complete as a human being, advancing my evolution from being a young punk into a man that I am supposed to be. Or she wants me to be. Or my destiny wants me to be. Whatever the case may be.

Before I went to Tacloban to study in Pisay, she gave me a crash course in different classes: ironing 101, laundry 101, housekeeping 101, table manners and ethics 101 and pakikisama 101. For two weeks, she made me do all the laundry and ironing as part of my on-the-job training. She was meticulous with my training, she would teach me the proper way of doing things and giving me some trade secrets. But she put a great emphasis on the pakikisama lecture. She reminded me that where I'm living for four years is not my home but other's, so I better brush up my pakikisama skills or I will forever live in misery.

When I was already in Tacloban, I realized my drill sergeant forgot one thing during the boot camp: she forgot to teach me budgeting 101. So, when I arrived in Tacloban, I spent all my money on things that I don't really need: toys, toys and more toys. After that, my mother scolded me because of my indiscriminate shopping spree. She gave me a day of lecturing about the importance of money, it's uses, it's worth, it's value, on where to spend it, how to save it, on where to buy things that are affordable. After that, I become conscious with my spending but until now I keep on failing on that subject. Hah, who needs budgeting 101 anyway?

During my high school days (and until now), she would always remind me that education is my key to a brighter future, so I must study hard, listen well and get decent grades. Well, I got decent and respectable grades during high school partly because I studied and mainly because I was close with my nerdie-nerd classmates. Since education was my key to a brighter future, I read and read and read and tried to educate myself through books which I think are a must-read to future intellectual heavyweights or future leaders of this condemned country. I was so voracious that I was finishing 4 books per week. Mama was delighted with my passion and also annoyed with it. Because instead of going out and smelling the freash air, I was inside the house reading and reading and reading (or during one summer, cross-stitching and cross-stitching and cross-stitching). I become isolated with my "study," surrounded by books, believing much on the saying: "let learning interfere with your education."

Since mama was troubled and disturbed with my self-imposed isolation (and nearly raising hell because according to her I was not getting enough sun), I started playing basketball. To get some fresh air and to excercise my lazy body. I was a fast learner, because it was easy as learning abc. After a few days of learning the basics, I was ready to play ball and reinvent the rules.

Mama was also very active in my spiritual development. She would see to it that I will be as devouted as they are to the Catholic faith. She would always wake me up every Sunday morning (or drag my lazy butt if i was so stubborn). I even became a sacristan major in our parish church. My mother was even telling me that I should consider studying in a seminary and eventually become a priest. Luckily, I passed the PSHS entrance exams. Sorry ma, but I want to study where there is a stipend. It didn't broke her heart because: 1) she was expecting it already; 2) the education was free; 3) I receive a monthly stipend; and 4) I was getting the best secondary education available.

In the folowing years, our contact became lesser and lesser because I lived away from our home during high school and college. But thanks to the cellphone, we can now contact each other 24/7, send text messages, forward cheesy lines and sometimes (which i hate so much) forwarding religious quotes.

One time, I was asking extra money from her because my allowance was not enough to cover for my weekly expenses. She replied, "No, I will not send you extra money. This should be a lesson to you." I texted back, "Ma, I will starve if you will not send money." She replied, "Sometimes anak, fasting is a blessing." Ah, weird motherly wisdom from my mom.

Miss you ma.


###############
To reg: ayan, gumawa na ako ng something na hindi related to politics. Pero i doubt if you'll read this... corny masyado!!! sorry wala akong maipost eh.. hehe

She told me four years ago that she found peace in me. She protested that my face has the semblance of tranquility, calmness and serenity.

"Why could you be so peaceful outside when you are full of angst inside. How could that be possible," she asked me. I answered her with a calm voice, "because I have to put on a mask to hide the feelings, the overwhelming emotions leaking out of me, to hide the grimace in my face. But now that I have you I have no reason to hate, no reason to abhor. At this moment I am taking off the mask that was once my armour and be myself again. At last I am free."

We talked and talked all night under the cloudless sky until the roosters crowed above the roofs. We talked about our past, our future, the what-if’s, the what-should-be’s, we talked about the sun and the moon and everything in between but never the present. We talked until at last it was time to say goodbye. She said goodbye to me while I was slowly making my way to the bus. If only she would stop me and tell me to never go back to Manila then I would easily do so. But there were no pleadings coming from her just sobs. At first, inaudible, now like wailings of a widowed woman. There was no other way but this: I will go back to Manila while she must continue her studies at Tacloban. Painful it was for me but I have to make a decision, and I must do it quickly. And I chose to leave, I chose to leave her behind, I chose my studies over her. I chose it because I know it will be for our future, for the both of us. A bitter pill that I’m forced to swallow.

Two years have passed by and we never saw each other. No communication. No nothing. My letters were sent back to me, unopened. Sometimes with a note from the postman, the addressee always declines accepting your letter. Every time I call to her boarding house her boardmates would say unsympathetically, “she is outside” or “she is at school” and sometimes “she is with her friends.”

So, this is the price I have to pay for not following my heart. Yet come to think of it, despite the refusals, the snob, the rejection, I was still hoping that someday we would meet and start all over again. Someday when I have a stable job, when I have a house and lot, when I have a car, I will go back to her and reclaim what was intended to be mine. But those dreams turned into ashes when a friend of mine called me. He told me that she eloped with somebody else, someone from ********, twenty-four kilometers away from our town. Her father, a retired civil servant, hunted them down and demanded that the boy marry his daughter. The boy, very immature for his age, hesitantly agreed to have a civil wedding hora mismo.

In the abysmal pits of hellish depths, I found myself lying unconsciously, mocking the day that I left her on that terminal, cursing the heavens for my misfortune, hating everyone I see, screaming for justice. I became a monster burning with hatred, a tormented soul out for revenge. Day by day, I was transforming into a zombie of some sorts. I do not know whether I was still breathing or not. I do not know whether I was alive or not. Poison was slowly killing me that I began to fear seeing myself in the mirror because I hate to see myself wasting, rotting and dying. In a span of two years I stopped living, I ceased to live. Yet the only thing that sustained me, keeping me alive was the hope that we will meet again, to ask her why.

Two years later, I received a text message from my brother. He told me she was in Manila. She was looking for a job. I said to myself bitterly, good luck to her, you slimy scum of the earth. And one more thing, my brother told me, she wants to see you badly.

So this is it, the crossroad I was hoping for, the crossroad I have been wishing for. I began to feel numb; I was feeling neither anger nor hatred but rather fear. Suddenly, I fear seeing her, I fear accepting the probability that she will be gone forever, I fear that she will say her last goodbye to me.

We met at Glorietta, exchanged pleasantries, performed the obligatory kamusta ka na? Ako? Mabuti naman. Ikaw, Kamusta ka na? Mga batchmates natin kamusta na? Si ano kamusta na? We were civil with each other. Then she talked about her stay in Manila while we were strolling and window shopping. She told me that she was staying at her auntie’s house, that she arrived here in Manila a month ago, that she tried looking for a job but she could find none, that she decided that she will just go home and apply as a civil servant just like her tatay and that she wanted to see me badly (desperately was her term). Upon hearing the word “desperately,” I stopped and faced her. My heart was pounding hard, my palm sweating, my whole body shivering of fear and paranoia. In front of me is the girl in flesh and blood who had the luxury of breaking my heart first, and the girl who almost ruined my life. In front of me, breathing the air that I was breathing. I took her hand. They were clammy just like mine.

Then she cried. She cried aloud, not minding the onlookers and passersby who were looking on us with puzzled looks and bewilderment. Soon I realized the very reason for her insistence on seeing me.

“That bastard! He cheated on me! P*tang *na niya!”

“Shhhhh! Tahan na. Sit down. Relax; I’m here at your side.”

She continued cursing while at the same time crying her heart out. Let go all of it, in one mighty surge, all your emotions, all those that is inside, all those that have been latent, let go of it, I told her. She was crying like there was no tomorrow. I understood her grief, her misery for they were also mine. Remarkably, she told the whole story to me while sobbing and sneezing.

I asked her, “Why me? Why come back to me? Why, of all people, me?”

“Because you are the only one who understands me, because you know how to listen to me, because I know you are the only one who cares for me."

I asked her what I can do. She replied that there is nothing I can do but listen and listen carefully. I insisted that I must do something or her dignity would never be avenged.

She replied to me, "You are such a nice person and I don't what you to be hurt because I love you so much. More than you'll ever know. More than you'll realize."

We strolled slowly until we reached the pink MMDA sakayan/babaan. So this is it. Time again to say our goodbyes, say our farewells. We are back to where we were before. Back to square one.

“O ayan na ang bus mo,” I whispered gently to her. She started walking towards the bus when suddenly I grabbed her arm and kissed her on the cheeks. I was expecting a slap from her but she just smiled. I said goodbye to her while she was slowly making her way to the bus. I waved goodbye to her and she did the same. I waved goodbye endlessly until all I could see is the black smoke emitted by the bus.

An agry voice haunts the night
like wails of fright, might, and gripe.
Terror is upon us all, bull
the gods, blow the horns, pull
the lever to unleash Apocalypse-
the avenger of mankind.

Let flesh clash flesh,
metal clang metal, teeth grit teeth.
Let the gods and titans clash
until there is none left in earth.
Let the doomsayers say their laments,
their woes, their eulogies. Let the poets
recite their greatests odes, woe to them
for they will sing our latent feelings,
woe, not praise, them because flesh clashes flesh,
gods bull titans, Apocalypse descending.

Sing to the land that will become barren,
untoilable: the battlefield of the lightning weilding
titans and the raging, rampaging gods. When
dust settles, one must stand to see the defiling
of the soil. Apocalypse, hear the cries of those
left behind, Mercy! Mercy! We cry mercy, for you
have it in abundance. In the horizon, I see blue
skies bloodied, I see the titans, one by one,
falling like trees, tamed by a malevolent storm.

Blow the horns, rejoice! because
Apocalypse is victorious, Olympus saved,
mankind salvaged from the pits of despair.
Sing praises that befit Him, praise those who braved
the terror, those who disappeared forever
because death claimed their weary bodies,
dusts claiming its own, its kindred.
Rejoice for we can now sleep well into the night
without fright plastered in our eyes.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Colombia in 1928. His many books include The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, No One Writes to the Colonel Anymore, Chronicle of Death Foretold, The General in his Labyrinth, Collected Stories, and Collected Novellas. Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Probably Garcia Marquez's finest and most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first literature since the Book of Genesis that should be a required reading for the entire human race. It takes up not long after Genesis left off and carries through the air age, reporting on everything that happened in beteen more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man...Mr. Garcia Marquez, has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningfula and meaningless in life."
--William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review--



excerpts from Ciento Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphiring it as he lived it, phrophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror. Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memoryof men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

 Democracy is not doing well for us. It is leading us into oblivion, into chaos and, sad to say, into sheer lawlessness. Democracy is so sweet in the ears that we become deaf to its deafening thuds; so saccharine, so cute, so appealing that we are led to believe that democracy is the end to our means, that democracy is absolute, that democracy is this and that. Bullsh*t, I dare say, just plain bullsh*t. Democracy is but a sugar-coated word for oligarchy: the rule of the few, the rule of the moneyed capitalist elite. Though it is the masa who decides who becomes the president for the six years, but still it is the elite who controls these morons, these politicians who salivates at the mere sight of money and power. Obviously, I have lost faith in the electoral system because the Philippine society will never change. We may have different leaders in every 3/6 years but still the system is intact, unyielding, indestructible and plainly everlasting. Same sh*t, different day. Politics is but a money-making scheme of the elite.

We should take the reins of power from the State. If force is needed then let blood spill and consecrate our motherland. Let teeth grit teeth, metal clang metal. Blow the horn, sound the alarm and let the spirit of revolt consume us all. We should grab it from the elite; seize the day because their end is coming.  Let apocalypse destroy them.

Give what is due to these monkeys: the hangman’s noose. Kill them all, finish them off. Their heads may not be enough to repay for the injustices they have done to us, to our forefathers, to our ancestors.  Let them pay for their insolence, their arrogance and ignorance to our miseries.  We came knocking at their door many times, not begging, but enlightening them of their mistakes, of their wrongdoings. But they slammed their doors and became deaf to our cries, to our demands.  And now, let them pay, we will raise hell so that they will remember us for the rest of their lives. We will let them remember in every second of their dear life.  We will be their nightmare in their every dream. We will haunt them until they become but shadows of their past, echoes of their former self.

Democracy is for the weak, for the feeble-minded, for the capitalists, for those greedy and sleazy bastards who collude with others to earn profits. We should tear it down, demolish it and replace it with something that is attuned to our needs. We need a system of government that is strong in the inside that is invulnerable to attacks from the outside, impenetrable, and has the support of every single citizen of the State. We need a state that can not be swayed by moralists, by the religious sector, or by any sector for that matter. We need a State that protects the weakest of the weak, and checks the strongest and the richest. We need a state powerful enough to hold power yet efficient enough to distribute it to every single citizen. We need a state that concentrates its power in its center but is capable of defusing it to any person who needs it the most. We need a state that is uncompromising, who does not know how to negotiate. It’s either they survive on our terms or not. We need a state that protects our basic rights but could easily take it away because rights should not be inviolable but rather given to those who are deserving of such rights.  We need a state that shares its wealth equitably. Lastly, we need a state that serves justice swiftly and appropriately, who knows no master nor slave; we need a state where the justice system is trusted upon and revered.

In short, we need a State that is powerful yet effervescent.  A state that commands its own destiny.

We should make Machiavelli’s posturings our battle-cry. But we should take it a step further: take the reins of power so that we, the intellectual elite who are the most capable, the most qualified to rule will be able to rule because it is our manifest destiny to govern these nameless, faceless countrymen of ours. Arise, because we have a destiny to fulfill.

 

Before bedtime, Papa would always tell us stories, sometimes fairy tales, sometimes stories about his childhood, of what was it like living in the 60's, and sometimes his travels around MIndanao. And sometimes, and it comes once in a blue moon, he would tell us stories about his life as a tibak (or pseudo-tibak would be appropriate, i think) during his college days in Manila. He would recall how they would throw stones at police officers as they were, in turn, being hacked mercilessly and cruelly. Just because they were airing their opinion that Macoy should step down because he was a puppet of the imperialist, the unwanted messiah of neo-imeperialists. Just because of Macoy's numerous human rights violations. Papa religiously join rallies around Metro Manila; the spirit of revolt was very much alive in him.

Whille we were in Davao, my father was very vocal against the Marcos administration. He could not stomach the perversity and extravagance of La Imelda and the continuing pillage and plunder of Marcos of our ailing economy, sending it kissing the canvass. While they were busy holding ballroom parties with their cronies and friends in Malacañang, the rest of the Filipinos are contented eating one meal a day just to survive. When Macoy declared that there will be a snap election on January 17, 1986 (which was later on moved to February 7, 1986), father volunteered in National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), which was an organization of 300,000 volunteers determined to protect the electoral process from fraud and abuse. Nagpatahi pa nga siya ng isang jacket na may malaking NAMFREL logo sa likod. He was determined to protect the ballots with his life, that was how fanatic he was. And when Ms. Aquino came to town to hold a political rally, father was there shouting Macoy, tuta ng kano! Of course, he dragged my innocent ass so that I could also be a part of history, so that I can claim and boast that I was also there when Tita Cory was campaigning for the incoming elections, that I was there to witness the birth of a new Philippines. And I have pictures to prove it. We were standing an arms length away from Tita Cory; we were reaching out our hands to her (an act that only fans do with rockstars) so that she could touch our hands and eventually our hearts. I don't know whether she touched mine or my father's o yung katabi ko. I don't care at all. What matters most was that she touched our lives, giving us hope that someday we will see the horizon without fear written across our faces.

Even if i could not understand the revelry going on (mind you, the rally has a very festive mood), I know that history was unfolding itself in that very moment. People were dancing, jumping and just plainly celebrating. I tried to sing along, I tried to cheer, I tried to cry, but my little voice was drowned by the chants of thousands of people who see Tita Cory as their saviour, as their true and long-awaited messiah leading them to the "true Canaan." The only vivid memory I could remember during that fateful night was the shower of yellow confett, flying above our heads like a swarm of locusts. It was like a shower of stars, a shower of million hope, a shower of promise. On that fateful night, when the world was celebrating it's triumph over tyranny, when everyone was enjoying the sweet taste of victory, I underwent a metamorhosis. I transformed into a political animal. Ah, on such an early and tender age, I knew definitely what I'm going to be in the future: a politician. Just like them, just like Tita Cory, just like Ninoy and eventually just like my father. Now, catch a yellow confetti and wish that it might come true.


Part 2 of Politics is Life series...

For my family, politics has become our bread and butter, our shield, our sword, our armour, our life. We live and die with it. We practically are survived by it and are destroyed by it. For us, politics is everything, the Alpha and Omega.

We are not aristocrats, neither are we baronic landlords. We are just a middle class family who, in some mysterious way, collected enough respectablity and crediblity; just barely enough to propel us into the political limelight. Our story began in 1992 national elections, the year that forever changed our lives.

Before 1992, we were still in Davao, living a happy middle class life: my siblings and I were studying at the exclusive Stella Maris Academy, my mother was taking up her masteral degree at a certain university and father was the sole salesman of National Bookstore in Mindanao (and yes he receives a big,fat paycheck every month plus commision for his sales). We were living the high life. It was just too damn perfect for a family portrait. Too damn perfect that it was too good to be true.

During the Christmas break of 1991, we went to our province (Eastern Samar) to have a vacation, to get away from the busy urban life, to escape momentarily from living the fast lane. It was during that vacation that destiny caught up with my father. He could no longer deny the political bug that has been biting him since time immemorial. He could no longer stomach the injustice, the corruption, the degradation of his beloved town, of his birthplace. Add the ongoing harrasment of the administration and its cronies to his parents and siblings, and we have the picture of a man trapped by circumstance and by his fate. Tormented by the mounting tensions and by his inner demons, he promised that he will run for mayor in the incoming election.

And run he did. He ran under the newly-formed Lakas-NUCD-UMDP of Ramos and De Venecia. Even if his candidacy was a longshot, he still tried to avenge our family honor. Being a neophyte among the giants and veterans, he encountered blunders upon blunders; it seems that the show would soon stop because of logistical problems, because of internal problems, because of anything sanely possible. While nearing the homestretch, father suffered a major setback: his father died of cardiac arrest. Our family was devastated. It seems we were about to break into a million pieces, about to fall apart. But our family was made of sterner stuff, from there we picked up ourselves and moved on and rallied, dedicating the ongoing and raging elections to our beloved patriarch. As the cliche goes, the show must go on. Although lacking in experience but full of heart and passion, father charged forward, leaping to the unknown. His star rose and rose. And during the day of judgement his star rose the highest, eclipsing all.
He won by a hair, just by a slim margin. My father's victory became a vindication of some sorts: for our family - after years of being in the dark, we could now longer say hello to the light; for our townfolks, who supported and believed in my father's dream; for the oppressed, now they have a champion who will deliver them out from their living hell.

The year 1992 marked the start of our "politial legacy." And from there on, we started writing our own history.

It was not only father who changed, from being a long lost son to a local town hero, in the year 1992. I too made a major transformation. From being a shy, and sometimes spoiled brat, I transformed into an assertive and goody-goody politician's son. I become more sensitive to the miseries of my kababayan. I become more political, more outspoken, and idealism was burning inside me like a raging fire, consuming me. And I vowed that I will never do anything that will taint my father's name and his legacy. So I became a good son, a good student and a good citizen.


Part 1 of a series

i came upon an article in INQ7.com concerning EDSA. Gusto kong ishare para di natin makalimutan ang mga nangyari noon. Bata pa ako noon kaya wala akong alam sa mga nangyayari pero ngayong mulat na ako, kailangan kong magbaliktanaw sa mga nangyari noong 1986. Kailangang maging estudyante ako ng kasaysayaan para di na maulit ang mga trahedya sa kinabukasan.


Amnesia anyone?
Feb. 25, 2004
By Juan Mercado
this story was taken from www.inq7.net
http://www.inq7.net/opi/2004/feb/26/text/opi_jmercado-1-p.htm

"COULD all newsmen please follow me," Colonel Generoso Alejo told the milling detainees in cramped Camp Crame's gym. It was almost midnight, first week of martial law. Outside, an eerie silence blanketed the streets, deserted due to the dusk-to-dawn curfew. "You have a visitor," he added.

Amando Doronila and I followed the late Louie Beltran, Luis Mauricio, Ben David, Manuel Almario, Benny Esquivel and others, filing into the barred reception room.

"Arresting teams" earlier nailed all of us with photocopies of warrants, signed by Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law enforcer Juan Ponce Enrile, under Proclamation 1081, by which Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law in 1972.

"Our midnight visitor" turned out to be our "host": Philippine Constabulary Commander General Fidel V. Ramos. "Nothing personal, gentlemen," he said after the amenities. "I was just ordered to neutralize you. Please cooperate. And we'll try to make things easy."

That was 31 years back. Have we cooperated since then -- by forgetting?

Eight out of 10 students today barely recall Senator Benigno Aquino's kangaroo trial before Military Commission No. 2, or why he was gunned down at the Manila airport tarmac.

Under Marcos’ "New Society," the Philippines "became a gulag of safe houses" where the regime tortured, maimed and salvaged, Amnesty International declared.

The Metropolitan Intelligence Security Group (MISG) ruled as Marcos' torture chamber. The notorious Colonel Rolando Abadilla and Lieutenant Panfilo Lacson (Philippine Military Academy Class of 1971) were MISG "stars."

But do we care?

Forget martial law and let's move on, Joseph Estrada whimpered when protests erupted over his move in 1998 to bury the dictator in Libingan ng mga Bayani [Cemetery of Heroes].

"We have very little collective memory of the past," Ateneo de Manila University president Bienvenido Nebres, S.J., told the Legacies of the Marcos Dictatorship conference. "We tend to live in a perpetual present. Thus, we can not see well into the future."

"Da King" [Fernando Poe Jr., the "king of Philippine movies] -- who would be president -- does not bother to forget. In fact, he cannot even remember.

"I wasn't aware of what's really happening," Poe told The Australian newspaper (Dec. 15). "My younger days -- it was in all movies. Politics just passed you by."

Is amnesia simplex today's response to the late senator Jose Diokno's eloquent letter, written from his Fort Bonifacio prison cell in December 1972:

"I've been deprived of freedom, stripped of my dignity... A non person, I'm reduced to having to ask permission for such a simple pleasure, as to step outside my prison to feel the wind on my face and the warmth of the sun on my back."

But "we can, even now, scrutinize our past; try to pinpoint what went wrong; determine what led to this madness," he added. "And how, when it ends, we can make sure it need never happen again."

Imelda Marcos and soul mates, however, insist on rewriting history.

Martial law was "one of the best things that happened in Philippine history," Madame Marcos asserted in a 1999 interview. "It was a peaceful provision to ensure peace for our country. Tayo ang nagligtas ng demokrasya [We were the ones that saved democracy]."

Textbooks in public schools scrub the national memory blank, Joel Sarmenta and Melvin Yabut of the University of Asia and the Pacific, said in a paper read at the conference on "Memories, Truth Telling and the Pursuit of Justice."

Read by over eight million students, these books paper over militarization of society, denigrate dissidents, ignore human rights abuses and massive kleptocracy. They recycle the claim that jack-booted rule was the only way to "save democracy."

"It should not surprise us that young people today are apathetic about the struggle for democracy," historian Ambeth Ocampo notes. "Martial law textbooks continue to miseducate."

Thus, "the trauma of Marcos terror became embedded in the Philippine institutional fabric," Professor Alfred McCoy writes in "Closer Than Brothers." "The Philippines seems caught in a long nightmare between remembering and forgetting."

There have been piece-meal attempts at rehabilitation. Representative Roque Ablan's House Bill 5147 has made "Ferdinand Marcos Day " a special non-working holiday in Marcos’ home province of Ilocos Norte and its capital Laoag City -- until the outspoken Haydee Yorac and protests shot that idiocy down.

In his novel -- "1984" -- George Orwell depicted a country where truth, freedom and justice were shoved down a "memory hole."

In the vacuum, amnesia institutionalizes injustice. History's falsification invites repeated abuse-and prevents healing. Evil is enshrined as virtue. Net worth becomes self worth as "pecuniary decency" emerges. Bankbooks become the key to social acceptance.

And words lose their meaning. A levy is not a tax, said those who robbed the coconut farmers blind. Theft is enterprise. "Why should I apologize for godly acts?" a puzzled Imelda asks.

People Power has never been about crowds. It was about an enslaved people's "yearning to breathe free." The issue is about values that "endure, even after the sun goes out."

How we remember asserts a shared past. But "all of us... must open our hearts to human memory," Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel insisted at Auschwitz memorial rites. "I do not want my past to become the future of our children."
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Percy Bysshe Shelley


"He undoubtedly shatters the world to bits, but only to build it nearer to the heart's desire, only to make out of its coloured fragments some more Elysian home for love, or some more dazzling symbol for that infinite beauty whish is the need - the profound, aching, imperative need - of the human soul."
-- George Santayana, "Shelley" --

Ode to the West Wind
Percy Byshee Shelley

I
0 wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, 0 hear!

II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: 0 hear!

III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: 0 hear!

IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, 0 Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! 0 Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?