WAITING FOR EMAILS THAT PROBABLY WILL NEVER COME

The email messages (in answer to emails sent to them weeks ago) that probably could have changed the blogger's mind never came. The deadline was reset again and again. It's 10 at night in the Philippines, the Asian country of thieves, greed, corruption.

Sentosa, Singapore

Highlander kids, Baguio City, the Simla of the Philippines

All rights reserved

Photos by the blogger

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NAGDANIW NI APO MANNURAT

     Mario Tejada, secretary of the Sanggunigang Bayan of Piddig, Ilocos Norte, and one of the few respected mannurat of the rival Ilokano writing group, told the blogger yesterday that the boss has published a derogatory poem in the internet against us. Wow! Perusing the "obra maestra" in his cellphone, we could only chuckle and shook our head. Errol Abrew, Renato Taylan and the blogger had a good laugh. 

    The poem is pure and simple speculation and had no basis in fact, reflecting the author's broken logic and shallow mentality.

     We were outside the lecture room of the College of Teacher Excellence of the Mariano Marcos State University in Laoag City. Occasion was the lunching of Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili's Ilokano dictionaries and "Gramatika ti Contemporaneo nga Ilokano." 

     Dr. Ariel is the coordinator of the Ilokano program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. A native of Laoag, he is the acknowledged Iluko literary icon and the blogger considers him as having the most active literary brain and "tangsit ti puli nga Ilokano."

     Errol Abrew, the  leftist writer from Caba, La Union, made a comment thus: "It is useless to battle wits against unarmed opponents." Who are these opponents? The members of the emerging "clique" of the organization, of course. We shall heed Abrew's diatribe.

   

EXPELLING THE BLOGGER FROM THE ORGANIZATION

In photo, the house of an Ilokano expatriate the blogger and his wife visited in Honolulu, with the famous Diamond head in the background.

The foul-mouthed writer from Laoag, the one who suggested such expulsion has no credibility--he is allegedly one of several members from a writers' group asking for financial support from SM. Anyway, the suggestion is ridiculous, if not  preposterous. Why should the blogger stay in a snakepit with him? The pit is controlled by the man who said he cheats his boss in card games?

You have offended the blogger. You have offended his clan (Julian-Labayog-Corpuz-Ancheta-Nagtalon- Pasion-Raval-Blanco-Miguel-Coloma-Manuel-Guillermo-Joaquin.) 

You have offended the blogger's wife. You have offended their sons and daughters-in-law. Yet the blogger told them, quoting the same Biblical words of the Lady From Down Under: "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

Nota Bene: The entry has been modified but means the same and  readers who take umbrage may file charges for libel against the blogger.

  "To You Most Respected Adviser and Father of  Timpuyog,"

Saanak a nagdeldelay a mangsungbat kadaytoy nga email ta kas nakunakon ken Madam ket sipapakumbabaak latta a mangawat ken agpakawan.

Ket dawatek met kenka, Ama nga awatennak met koma. Ammok a nagbasolak iti inaramidko a dika immuna a kinonsulta maipanggep iti pannakausar ti account ni Dalia, a gayyemko a gapu iti dawatna kaniak nga ilawlawagko kadakuada ti napasamak. Nga iti daytoy ket nangparnuay iti kasta unay a riribuk kadatayo nangruna kenka, kas adigi ken ama ti Timpuyog. Ngem panunotentayo a daytoy ket agbalin a leksion kadatayo amin, Sir. Ta amintayo nagkamali. Ket sapay koma ta agtultuloy latta ti panagkakaduatayo a kas iti sigud a kinatalna. Ket no adda man ti basolko ken Sir Errol (patiek nga awan), dinak koman dadaelen ta kas tao adda karbengak a mangtakderto iti imatang iti Dios no aniaman ti nagbasolak kenkuana. Saan a datayo ti mangrukod iti padatayo a tao, ta aniaman a pangrukodtayo iti padatayo a tao ket isunto met ti usaren ti Dios a pangrukod kadatayo.

Ala kastan ket agyamanak unay, Sir.

Myra

CLASHING SWORDS WITH NO-NONSENSE JOURNALISTS

      

      We don't participate in inanities. We participate only in moral and intellectual discourses. We don't curse people, we don't wish other persons' death.

      If we have to make conclusions, we have to see to it that our facts are correct and irrefutable.

     The tools of their trade--who, what, where, when, why, how--can cut you down literally. Meaning, they know more information than any ordinary man like you. They know your secrets; they know your relationship, personal, sexual.

     We are not liars or cheats in the same manner that the leader has been cheating his boss in card games.  This is not a product of the imagination. It came right from the horse's mouth.

    NOTA BENE: What or who is a "Lady"?

     "Lady"is a title of of nobility in Great Britain. As a social term, "Lady" is used as a "parallel to Gentleman in order to emphasize norms expected in civil society or in situations  requiring civil courtesies." Example, from an American dictionary: She is too much of a lady to tell your secrets to her friends. 

      As should have been applied in a writers' organization:  

     1. She is too much of a lady to believe in what the dirty-minded female writer said about the journalist. 

     2. She is too much of a lady to believe what SVP said to her regarding the planned expulsion of  the journalist  from the organization. But she said, "Apuraem, adingko a Severino..."

 

WHY THE PHILIPPINES IS GRAFT--RIDDEN AND PRONE TO CORRUPTION

DIRTY-MINDED ILOKANO WRITERS

     It is clear that she is evil and owns a dirty mind ("kuna ni ...a selselselam kano iti tarong ta u...") as dirty as the foul-mouthed writer from Laoag.  The postings were made in the internet and the girl was using a different name to malign the most prolific writer in the language in the Philippines.
     But they are being tolerated by their leader or leaders?
     They are a disgrace to the writing profession. Do they know about decency, fair play and transparency? Honesty? Writing is truth-telling?
     The  group they belong to could be ripped apart because of its moral orientation or, to be fair, moral ambiguity. Maybe, maybe, the blogger is wrong?
     Fely, you are too trusting. Despite the inaccuracy in my letter, the point is you didn't meet me and the foul-mouthed writer and we could have discussed things and we could have solved the problem. We are on the side of truth, Fely.

TRUTH, ACCORDING TO KRISNAMURTI

     The Indian philosopher made this statement in 1929 (Theosophical Digest, 1992):

     "Truth is a pathless land. Man can not come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of the mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection."

THE BLOGGER AS POET-JOURNALIST WRITING ABOUT THE FALL OF A PHILIPPINE BUREAUCRAT

Poetry is the art of saying mouth-fulls in so few words. It delivers its message in a special kind of language and the poet, as communicator, uses literary devices such as figures of speech like simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy. Rhyme and rhythm, imagery and symbolism, meter and other elements are part and parcel (not necessarily all) of the genre. The poet, as an observer and through this special language, can create or show a mood,  demonstrate a viewpoint, tell a story, and reflect his personality--all this in one sweep of the pen.

The journalist delivers his message in direct and precise language--he can be brutally frank--but the poet can be subtle, hides his anger and other emotions in metaphors and similes and you have to read his poem several times to get the meaning of what he is saying in the lines and stanzas. We are presenting the following poem in connection with our criticisms against this Philippine agency whose personnel hide anomalies, a practice that seems to be imbedded as culture in the Philippines.

 (Remember the P10-billion scam involving Philippine senators and congressmen? Is that true Sen. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr.-- the blogger's bet for President of his country?)

TODAY ARRIVES THE NEWS ABOUT THE FALL OF DOLOROSO DANS*

it's a wet morning, but a promise
of sun lingers on the glass panes.
the room is too small for these
public men dissecting omissions
of the boss now gone to nowhere
to celebrate alone his fall.
(was it the absent magazine message
that triggered his disaster?) we are like
conspirators revising the plot in some
alleyways dark with hate and violence.
a, brutuses recreating cesar's gory death.
no matter, the joy is ours now
and we shall jot in our diaries this day
of victory.

basil valdez on tape wails out
a song sans end (requiem to dead rat?)
the waxed floor is littered with crumpled
tissue papers and cigarette butts.
the rubbish can wait, sings the janitor,
baring a set of tattered teeth as he joins
in the banter and the laughter (ha-ha-ha-ha,
the fetters broken?)

indeed, this people's domain needs
cleansing cream, new manners, new minds
that, in pursuit of the sun, shall burn
the night with liquid fire of gods and nigh
ambitions. no more ruins to tread this
mid-noon of our separate lives: the swan song
and the recorder is broken forever.
(did he not know, did not the cabal
that fed him with parables of lies
hear the funeral songs of gentle souls?)

the typewriters are silent, the whir
of electric fans lost in the cacophony
of sounds. like cattle loosed from a corral,
we excite the air and our voices reveal
kinship with roman assassins. no matter.
this joy is ours now. permit this stupidities
for soon our ship shall move again and
blaring trumpets shall in distant shores
announce our arrival.

        *Included in the anthology of Ilokano and English poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger," with introduction by Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

HACKED EMAIL ADDRESS

The blogger's email address andrewlab20011@hotmail.com  has been hacked. If you want to communicate with us, please post in this blog

PRAYER IN THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

They have maligned the blogger, O, Lord of Hosts.
They called him names
And smashed the mirrors of memory.
The blogger did his best for them.
The baby is now a young maiden, walking tall.
You knew what we and Errol did--the many sleepless nights
In the altar of sacrifice.
The burned offerings that the toddler might live
You know the many lies
The treacheries, the subterfuge.
Let your justice run its course, O Lord of Hosts.

THE 'IFS' OF LIFE AND the KINGS AND QUEENS OF SIMPLETONS

"If you were not in my country, I would not have met this accident, " the Saudi man said to the Filipino driver inside the court room.

It was a traffic altercation in a Saudi city. The Pinoy was family chauffeur of a Saudi businessman and was driving his employer to his office in the downtown area.

The Saudi, in his limousine, was trying to beat the red light when his car's rear bumper was hit by the car with the Pinoy at the wheels.

The judge ruled in favor of his fellow Saudi.

Junction in San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte, the malabi  (earthen pot) capital in Amianan, the imagined country in northern Philippines.

 

It was the logic of the Saudi that caught the attention of the journalist, "If 

 you were not in my country.... "

What if it was another Saudi that the man "encountered" in the traffic accident?

An accident always happens by chance. A fortuitous event and it was unfortunate that the Filipino was there?

There are many "ifs" in life.

"If I did not go the the lotto outlet, I would not have bought the winning ticket."
"If I did no go to Mindoro, I would not have met the woman who became my future wife."
"If you did not reprimand this girl, she would not have done her thing."
"If you go away, I will die." 

Stretch the discourse further:

 "If there were more honesty and transparency in the writers' group, we would not have come to this situation."

"If the blogger did not publish the rules of the contest, there would not have been writers' quarrels in the internet."

" What if they did not give permission, as they did, to writers in the rival group to enter freely the portal and maligned us? "

"If they did not go, as they did, to Pure Gold mall in Laoag, the Australian lady would not have lost her $5,000 and other currencies to pickpockets." 

A, the sine qua non in life and the Kings and Queens of simpletons!

The blogger who suffered verbal abuses--the first time in his life-- from them is now as confused as the Filipino driver in the Saudi capital.


    

HOW TO LOSE 10 POUNDS

From a woman's magazine:

Ilokana TV broadcaster Grace Alba and her Fil-Am auntie Erlinda Julian Gantong at the Padsan River in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte

1. Eat breakfast
2. Watch your fluids (for example, use skimmed milk in your coffee or go for black coffee, which has only at least 10 calories per cup)
3. Drink more water
4. Take the stairs
5. Swap white for brown--bread, pasta, noodles

QUOTES FOR THE SOLITARY LITERARY BARBARIAN

  
     "There are deserts in every life, and the desert must be depicted if we are to give a fair and complete idea of the country."--Andre Maurois

  "Free at last! Free at last!  Oh, my God, I am free at last!"--Martin Luther King, Jr. 

     "Writing a story is one way of discovering sequence in experience. Connections slowly emerge. Like distant landmarks you are approaching, cause and effect begin to align themselves."--Eudora Welty 

     "We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy to befall us is to go unimagined." N. Scott Momaday  
     
       "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will."--George Bernard Show, Nobel Prize winning playwright

     "A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be the mercy of my emotions. I want to used them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."-- Oscar Wilde, author and poet

     " The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."--Schopenhauer

     "The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts."--Pascal

    "Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself."-- Herman Hess

THE 21-YEAR OLD MAIDEN WHO KILLED HERSELF: THE MYSTERY OF FAITH

She was beautiful, tall, the slender kind, fair-complexioned, with a ready smile that would have disarmed you. She would have had wonderful years ahead of her. Yet on the night her lover told her their relationship had ended, she killed herself-- all of her 21 years on earth.

If you were Lani, the village lass of Ramon, Isabela, what would you have done in a similar situation?

Would you sleep the rejection off and let the issue go away? Would you take action until the following day when things are different--you see the sun rising beyond the far mountains and the sky and the hills appear to be on fire. What a beautiful sight!

Would you stay in your room the whole day and nurse the inflicted pain?
Would you think a million times that life is no longer worth living but in the process you see the light?

Would you go to church and, in the silence, pray to the Almighty God for comfort? Would you pray to Him for guidance? Would you go the local priest and seek counsel?

Or would you join your friends and go camping or go to Boracay and see the place and find out for yourself why it is the best tourist destination in the planet?

There are so many things to do in a day in a difficult situation.

But for Lani there was only one way out of her despair and frustration: Kill herself. This is the mystery of the human condition and faith. Why did God her creator allow Lani to take her own life? Isn't God in her that He would have told her it was not the right thing to do? That He alone is the giver as well as the taker of human life?

And the philosopher says that God was generous to her: she gave her everything, loving parents, a home, a beautiful mind including the freedom of choice. And the argument stops there? No. Did he also give her a mind that snaps at the slightest pique?

Lani's action was deliberate. Before she jumped to her Lethe--a watery grave at one of the canals of the Magat River Irrigation System that originates in the village of Aguinaldo--she wrote a suicide note which says in part," Mother, I drowned myself. " She was alive then but she was thinking in the past, her sentences were in the past tenses.

The Magat River in Ramon, Isabela, the water of which empties into the canals of the Magat River Irrigation System.

The last time her mother saw her was at 11:30 at night outside their home. Lani was then talking to someone on her cellphone. Her mother even called her to come inside the house because it was then a windy and cold night.

She was missing for two nights and three days. Then there was a call from a  funeral house in Cordon town, 19 kilometers away from Ambatali, informing her family of her body, which had been found floating in the irrigation canal in the village of Malapat. They had traced Lani's family through her cellphone she had zippered in her maong pants.

WHERE IS JONAS BURGOS?

"Free at last! O, my God, I am free at last!"--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where is Jonas Burgos, the activist son of the late Ilocano journalist Jose? Now six feet all below the ground or just disappeared like the desaparecidos of Argentina? The desaparecidos  were left-wing activists  and political dissidents of Argentina, ruled then by a brutal military junta, who were kidnapped, drugged, dropped, still alive, out of aircrafts, into the sea. 

In a press conference, when asked about the missing persons, one of the military generals said, "They are neither dead or alive; they disappeared."

Was Jonas killed by his alleged military captors, his body put in a container, which was then cemented and dropped into the sea?  Kas iti ar-aramiden dagiti politiko iti Amianan kadagiti kabusorda? 


Dios-ti-agngina, Isaganie, for the insight and the guidance. Muchas gracias, mi amigo de Madrid, para el comento, "Nawaya a Prensa, Saan a Mangidumduma. "

It was all in good faith and in the name of truth and freedom.