LETTER TO THE CABA, LA UNION WRITER

Books and magazine at the blogger's cubicle at the third floor of the Julian ancestral home in Laoag City

"... no more ruins to tread this mid-noon of our separate lives."- from "Today Arrives the News About the Fall of Doloroso Dans," prize-winning poem by the blogger


You must have reached a point where nothing matters anymore. Not even the blogger's pleas for you to stay with the group until the issues are resolved and we are one and indivisible again.

The enormity of oppression by a member whose moral-intellectual orientation has been the subject of unsavory conversations must have been too much to bear. The blogger understands. You can't take it anymore.

Speaking of "you can't take it anymore," does it also apply to the blogger? He was coming out a noisy computer shop yesterday when something overwhelmed him--was it inertia or ennui?

Not even the comforts of home could banish the strange emotion and the mind-set. And then the blogger remembered the "encounter" where another member heaped expletives against him. You knew that we did not hit back but dismissed the incident as the activity of a mad man in hell.

But there was a postscript of what happened in Laoag, my hometown, my pride. (Apo Ariel Solver Agcaoili's hometown, too; his pride.) It was during that Ilokano literary event at the Mariano Marcos State University. The Lady met the tormentor in private and gave him P1,000 or was it P1,500?

There are moral interpretations of acts: was the adversary rewarded for insulting the blogger? That it was not wrong to verbally abuse the blogger, who is the adviser of the Iluko writers' association, without any cause? That it is alright, as the foul-mouthed writer did, for a writer to go outside the boundary of decency and fair play?

The best thing that could have been done under the circumstances was for the parties to talk things among themselves and solved the problem right there and then.

Your oppressor called the blogger names in the internet. A tyro, new in the organization, called me names? It bewilders the blogger that such audacity, not to say licentiousness, has found sanctuary in timpuyog. What and who emboldened her to trash me in, of all places, the cyber world?

Was this in connection with the baseless accusation that the blogger used the account name of DVP to hit Ariel Tabag? 

I was cut deep inside but I told the Lady I was heeding her call for Christian forgiveness  for those who wronged us. That's what I did it because I thought I would feel better.

Reminder: forgiving is the Biblical "putting coals" on the head of the adversary, a kind of power that dominates any enemy and make him ashamed of what he did. But you can argue the premises. Who should be forgiven?

"You can't take it anymore." A virtual rule for the leftist but not communist?

A virtual rule for the blogger who has been ill-treated by no less than the members, at least some of them?

How does one go beyond the sacrifices--time, efforts, money--that we made for the organization and the magazine ?

A, the sacrifices of the most prolific writer in the language, whose articles are not being paid by TMI while the oppressor receives P2,500 as lay-out artist for every issue of the magazine. Did you ask why she is being paid for that amount while TJ writers don't enjoy the privilege? (Hey, the 5-year old toddler, the baby, has become a young maiden, walking tall. She will go places. Ilokano writers, especially the young ones, will be proud of her. )

What's "beyond sacrifices"? Are we martyrs to this cause that we should be victims of this kind of oppression?

And what is the article of faith of those who dance with the enemy? Who are the enemies within? The card-carrying members of kindred minds and membership in the wrecking crew? Did they defend timpuyog when they excoriated us, and they are still excoriating us, with all the venom at their command?

We are not politicians. We are not Janus-faced. We are truth-seeking writers. We play by the rules. We play with honest cards. 

July 2, 2013 

 
Nota Bene: The blogger has removed the posting, "Ripping Apart the Organization," and closed the issue of the the feature writing contest brouhaha.He said he owned responsibility for the feature writing fiasco and the publication of one entry in the writers' magazine.