FAREWELL TO REALITY, JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN

     It may be good to make preparations for that journey to the so-called Great Divide. Farewell to reality to a place that may not be there, that may not exist except in the realm of the mind or that undiscovered country around the corner. Why separate yourself alone and wait as if the assassin who vowed to kill you is lurking in the vicinity?
     Get out of the room of fear and see the eternal sun shining bright in an azure sky; listen, listen to the soft music and the voices of the living.

 

 

     Why waste time in useless imaginings. If time is no longer on your side, why bother? Make use of what is left of your it; the best is yet to come.

SOME NOTES ON THURSDAY

NO ILOKANOKA

     Saan koma a lipaten dagiti Ilokano ti lengguaheda. Ngamin, isu daytoy ti napalabasda, ti agdamada, ti masakbayanda. No didan ammo ti agiluko, saandan nga Ilokano ket awan karbenganda a maawagan iti Ilokano.

That Standard Operating Procedure for Corrupt Politicians

     VP Jejomar Binay (or his alleged illegal acts) is the subject of an article that is the banner headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It appears that a black mud has been splattered across the face of this Ibanag who wants to be president of the Philippines in 2016.

     Binay was a poor human rights lawyer who fought the dictatorship, its excesses, human rights violations, corruption. It's ironic that the things he fought and became famous are thrown back against him as having been committed by him, his and his siblings--incumbent Makati mayor Junjun, sister Nancy (in the case of cakes sold to the city's senior citizens?)

     Binay, a native of Cabagan, Isabela has a lot to explain on the alleged overpriced Makati Park building, rigged bids and other anomalies. He just can't dismissed these accusations as politically-motivated.


STRAY LINES, THE SONG OF ANGELS




Bridge to Potia, Ifugao across the Magat River that flows toward San Mateo, Isabela

The vanishing Ilokano kareton (bull cart) in Paoay, Ilocos Norte

their faces, blurred, serrated are fading away,

their black breathes announcing the breaking dawn
here in Menifee

the magazine was breathing, its life robust
with young words, old words made new

we were poised for the stars

suddenly, a west wind in tandem with another from
the east came, blowing away the lights and the angels

we, in dark nights, tried to kill the emotions of fear,
hate, anger that were strangers in the old hometown

POEM X AND DAGITI KUDDAKUDDA NI EMERENCIANA

 

the rag dolls

a quick addendum to the high-profile alibaba
no investment, no cash will be interred in memory

like the carcasses of thieves and poisonous snakes
slithering across the dark pages of the magazine
of dreams.


DAGITI KUDDAKUDDA NI EMERENCIANA*
(Nota Bene ken ni Errol Abrew)

Nabileg ken makabibineg ti parabur ken kalangiking ti diosa: 
adda ngarud dagiti agalad idinto nga agsasaritada iti ngata-ngata,
agipurruakda kadagiti balikas nga apuy a mabalin met koma
a rosas a binnatog iti sappuyot ti bagbaga a di nakasusuro iti gura.

Wenno uray panaginkukuna a  saan ket a naraber a parpardaya met
ti anniniwan ken al-alia dagiti amin a pungtot ken buritektekda.
 
(Adda bariw-as iti panangibando iti kinasudi idinto nga agpapas
nga agmanadada kadagiti sikkarud iti timpuyog ti wayawaya?
Ania ti labes ti tirtiris ti kinatiri? Adda agballatek nga arrabis ?)

 

anansata, adtoy ti baribari a mangikkat kadagiti sansanuong
wenno kitkituman no di man panagbuteng kadagiti bambanti;
 
anansata,  mabati  latta koman dagiti babassit a munmunieka, 
dagiti agikurkur-it iti ballada iti sagrado koma a bukod a daga.

 

*Nairaman iti revised/ version ti "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger", antolohia dagiti dandaniw nga Ilokano ken Ingles ni Peter La. Julian

PINAY CRABS, VAMPIRES IN US WORKPLACES

The million shoes of Imelda
stacked in gleaming steel ladders
arranged like a pyramid,
the Aswan Dam crumbling down
like a house of Pasuquin salt.
In black and white,
the photo serrated
a face contorted
in  pain.

She was shouting
again, delirious in her dream:
the bronze-winged Pinay vampire--
cavernous mouth dripping, dripping
with blood--
chasing her
in and out
in and out
of the hospital.
And she saw a jackfruit
caramelized into the guayabano leaves
in the old country.

THE LOST MARBLE SOUNDS

Moving at right angle
Inside of me
In the square of nowhere:
The flowering dream
Entangled in the clouds
Around a ball of fire
In the late afternoon
In the extreme weather
Here in Menifee.

THE FILIPINO CRAB MENTALITY IN AMERICA

     Things sometimes fall apart, D, but it's not the end of the world. You must hold your center, your beautiful soul, that your co-workers notice shining bright in your job and in your social relationship in the workplace.
     You have become a victim of the Filipino crab mentality that your oppressor should have left behind in the old country.
     A and her cohorts (also Filipina nurses) who succeeded in pulling you down will have their day in court and in the court of the Almighty. And karma will forever hound this daughter of Herodias who, along with management, committed this injustice against you.

AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY

     It was a five-year affair that the blogger and the writer from Caba, La Union struggled for: to make the Ilokano-English magazine the most outstanding of its kind in the imagined country of Amianan. A great sacrifice of love for the language and the written word.
     It was, so to speak, an exercise in futility.

    

   


Quote from Henry David Thoreau:

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

DAGITI MAISAANG ITI KARAANG (para kada JSPH, Jr., Manang Pacing, Manang Ising, Kdpy)*

"Life is not measured by the number of breathes we take, but by the number that takes our breath away."--Maya Angelou

Kas iti dalluyon nga agapon iti malem
Agsublitayo latta iti taripnong ti kalgaw
A maladaga manen ti kigaw a sirmata iti aringgawis.
Kasano ngamin a pumusay ti saan pay a naipasngay
Iti awan patinggana a panagsapul iti dayag?

Nalmes ti dungsa iti kape ti linnagip iti baet
Ti saan nga aggibus a dung-aw dagiti dalluyon
Iti pannakapespes kadagiti darikmat iti tinawen
Nga isusuknal iti bukodtayo a siudad ti Jerusalem.

(Iti daytoy a rabii, nalipatanda daydi immuna a balla
A nangtiliw ti kararua ti daniw ti samiweng ti gunglo
                                                                  a pinutarna.
Apay a nagsayukmo ni Manang Ising?)

Kas kadakayo, ammok laeng daydi apuy a simgiab
Idiay Sison ni Apo Turing a nangsilmot met kadakami
Kadaydi Lina ni Gene, da Binot, Virginia, daydi Jimmy.
Ammok laeng ti areng-eng dagiti kutibeng a nangngegko
Kadaydi Manong Pel, daydi Apo Godo, Manong Viring--
Isuda amin a simmina a saan man laeng a nagpakada.

Apay ngamin, aya, daytoy maulit-ulit nga isasarungkar?
Saan a mapaksuyan dagiti mata uray no kuridemdemen?

Adu latta dagiti saludsod a tawataw dagiti sungbatda.
 
Iti lugan nga agawid, awan ti arimekmek a kasla ketdin
Sangsangalen ti sarita/daniw iti adu a bariw-as, panagbirok
                                                iti dayag ken imnas

A maisaang iti karaang ti ab-abbi, patiray-ok wenno
Panangitan-ok ken kantiaw iti sumaruno a panagkikita.




* Not included in expanded version of Ilokano-English anthology, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger."

"IN SITUATIONS OF INJUSTICE"

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."--Desmond Tutu

 

 

 

Desmond Tutu is a high ecclesiastical official in Africa. An activist priest, he is like the great Philippine Jaime Cardinal Sin who minced no word against the excessess of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

 

What now is the role of the church in the scheme of things in the Philippines where no less than senators, congressmen, high government officials and even Vice-President Jejomar Binay are accused of a plethora of wrong doings, mostly involving money?

  Cardinal Tagle has spoken against lawmakers for their misused of the funds that were supposed to have gone for the development of economically-deprived areas in the country. Needless to say, most of the money went into the pockets of officials of fake NGOs and senators, three of whom are now detained at a police facility.

 

WE have yet to hear officials of a church that owns the biggest arena in the world and notorious for their bloc vote that makes a difference in Philippine politics. Needless to say, members become high factotums of the bureaucracy once their candidates are elected to office. Are they are on the side of the oppressor of the poor millions and millions of Filipinos?

 

What can we say of politicians and their families who live in mansions, condominiums, gated subdivisions while Filipinos go hungry?

LINE FROM A POEM-IN-PROGRESS

    
Rise up at 4:27 AM after a yoga exercise consisting mainly of raising my hands while lying in bed with white sheets , palms open, closed eyes and counting at a slow pace. After at least five minutes (something like three hundred counts) my irregular heart beating was no more. I felt calm of body and mind. This is a technique for lowering blood pressure.

     From yesterday's tweet and FB timeline with comments from Apo Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Architect Julio Belmes who works somewhere in one of countries under the former USSR, with some changes:

     Suddenly, the perfect blade
     of memory comes, slashing
     the dark cold dawn: the native soul

     in a faraway country


Quote from Albert Camus:

    "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

TREATING THE DAY WITH RESPECT

"I treat the day with respect."

Thus said Michael Douglas in an interview with media and published in a local paper. The American actor, son of the great Kirk Douglas, has tongue cancer.

Did he make such statement because his days are numbered and has to value each day and make the best of it? This includes, of course, activities for the hopeful cure for the illness.

Connect this day with the ancient saying, carpe diem or seize the day and make it fruitful while savoring it.

And "This is the day that the Lord has made..." Part of a song sung by Christians during their services.

THE BLOG THAT THE BLOGGER FOLLOWS

     The blogger is a follower of the blog of Shelley's Scraps by John Shelly, an accomplished "roving" book illustrator and creator from the UK. He had a one-man show recently at the Yui Garden gallery in Nakamadchidai, Yokohama, Japan. I have great admiration for artists like Shelley, whose art has taken him to many countries. Not possessing his gift,  the blogger can only wished he had this inborn talent that he could have exploited. The blogger envies him. Juan S.P. Hidalgor, Jr., the Ilokano literary icon, is also endowed with this kind of art and the blogger wonders whether the former Bannawag magazine deskman profited from practising it. Reminds me also of the late Alejandro Hufana of Poro Point, La Union, an accomplished painter and poet.






Sunflowers on a roadside in Winchester CA

NOT THE BLOGGER'S COUNTRY MONOPOLY

     "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessings of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."--Winston Churchill

    
     The praying and preying politicians, they who stole the people's money, are not unique in my country as a democracy, Mehru Jaffer. They, too, populate even great and responsible countries of the world like America and India. Have you heard or read about the US governor who was convicted of corruption along with his wife? (Shade of the conjugal dictatorship?)
     But Filipino politicians are a unique breed: their greed is gargantuan and could not rein it, even passing their behavior to wives and sons and daughters. While they live the high life, residing in mansions, condominiums and gated subdivisions, the poor--and there are millions of them--fend for themselves in their barongbarong and makeshift shelters under bridges and overpasses, along esteros, river banks. In America, the homeless are taken care of by the state and fed adequately from state funds.
     Who will house and feed the hungry in the Philippines? The politicians who are supposed to make welfare laws for these marginalized people?

AN EMPTY HOUSE, ONE LUXURY

Yell.
Beheaded fellow journalists James Folly, Steven Sotloff
That black-hooded koranic barbarian
From multi-cultural neighborhood
London inflection
Damn.
No Starbucks coffee
Yell.
A godless, evil religion
These Moros who slew
Christian Batalla, Fr. Gallardo in Mindanao.
Damn.
Yell.

HOW DO YOU START A STORY?

     A male friend arrives in the middle of a conversation with an acquaintance. He is agitated and seems to have lost his voice and you asked, "What happened?" And he stammered," Somebody with a gun has just shoot down an elderly man at the corner liquor store."
     And then the usual questions posed by a journalist: Who is the person? Who was killed? Why was he killed? How was he killed? And so forth and so on.
     You have a picture of the incident. If it was murder, you ask why was the man killed?  A love triangle ? The man was married? Did he belong to a gang? Why was he in the store?
     Can one make a story out of  the narrative of the new arrival? How do you begin the story? Who is the story teller? Can you make the dead man the narrator of the story. Can you start the story with him seeing the gun firing toward his heart? The last seconds of his life, as the start of the story?
     

OUR PRAYERS AND ENERGIES FOR MARIEL

    She was scheduled for her second chemotherapy procedure at the end of last month. The blogger was planning to call her the following day but there was a lot of activities and we failed to lift the phone. We feel bad about it. But we hope by now she has recovered her strength. The procedure always weakened her physically. She has still six of this kind of cure. Our former colleague in a Philippine government agency has stage 2 cancer of the breasts.
     Mariel, who lives in Pomona with her married daughter and two grandchildren, still goes to work as a secretay of a company in California. Our prayers and energies to you, Mariel.

 

Quote of the Day

 

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts."--Winston Churchill

EYES WIDE OPEN/PETER LA. JULIAN

QUO VADIS, LITERATURA ILOKANO? 

   Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa was one of the judges of the Ilokano short story category of the 2014 Palanca Award for Literature in the Philippines. The others were Dr. Adel Lucero who does not write in the language, and Leonardo Belen, one-time film director whose Ilokano writing probably faded since time immemorial.

   Dr. Agcaoili's comments on the 16 short stories submitted for the Palanca are disturbing and need the attention of all Ilokano writers:

     1. The lot, 16 of them did not do justice to the ability of the Ilokano writers to write a good story. It looks like this year's entry is a rehash of the same pieces that did not win in previous Palanca contests or in other contests for that matter.
     2. The language, generally, is not the best that I expected. It lacks creativity, restraint, elegance, and, that capacity to suggest a symbolic meaning. We don't have there in these entries.
     3. NOTE BENE: I don't think any of these entries deserve a first prize. A first prize indicates capability, quality of the work, and a clarity of vision and insight. I did not see this in any of the works here.
     4. We must demand more from our Ilokano fictionists. What we have is the same format we have seen since time immemorial, the same soap-opera like stories, the same age-old issues that could be solved by using the magic wand or uttering abracadabra.
     5. When not awarding a first prize, we are suggesting to our writers this: "Hey, you shape up. We don't award you the first prize because you came in first in the ranking. We are awarding the first prize because that first prize meets all the criteria of the first prize, of the highest prize.

     Amen. But what will they do with the first prize money? Will it go back to Palanca and added to the prize money for the 2015 Ilokano short story category of the annual literary award?

Dr. Agcaoili (sitted) and the blogger in a San Fernando City, La Union restaurant

2014 PALANCA AWARDEES

 

Quote of the Day

 

"The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible."--Mark Twain

 

e

 

     In his Facebook account, Errol Abrew, a no-nonsense Ilokano writer from Caba, La Union, Philippines, congratulated the Ilokano fictiionists who won in the 2014 Palanca Literary Award for Literature. They are a certain Ramones, second place; and the esteemed Roy Vadil Aragon, 3rd place. The blogger does not know anything about Ramones. But for the writer to beat Mr. Aragon in the ranking is something.
       Who were the judges in this year's Ilokano short story category. The same Mafia? The veteran Ilokano writer Rey Duque, a perennial Palanca winner, is no longer there. He died this year. Rey, a Palanca Hall of Famer, has won the most number of awards in the annual contest and no Ilokano writer will be able to duplicate his feat in the years to come. Rest in peace, Rey. You have done your part not only in the vineyard of Ilokano fiction but also in Philippine fiction.
     The results indicate the the quality of Ilokano writing fiction this year? Why was there no first place winner?
      Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa made an acidic comment about the "artistry" of the entries this year. Did he sit as one of the judges in the Ilokano short story category?