Journeys by Peter La. Julian

Composed in 2010, Daldalliasat was read during the Baguio Panagbenga Flower Festival last February--at the Audio-Visual Room of the College of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Baguio.

JOURNEYS/DALDALLIASAT

1.
This looking for the pot of gold
This looking for the rich gentlemen
This looking for the young years

In Darayday, Santa Maria and Gabu
This looking for another shore
Is it looking for what is not there?

2.
In Honolulu, did the sun set in the west?
Did you see the full moon at noon?
Were you looking for the bar girl
Or was it Baguio's naked shadow in a dump
At a Waimanalo back street?

Was the apparition at Halekulani
on the beach at Waikiki a memory
of the white sands of Saud in Pagudpud?

3. What did you say to him--the huge Polynesian
in rumpled coat- who begged for a dollar as you
stepped out of Dimsum after gorging on noodles
in the late hour?

Did you wave him away? Or was it the grease man
stretching his arms for alms on the pavement beside
the Catholic church along Quezon boulevard?



8.
Stop it! Stop it!
Was the Caucasian in red-blue jogging pants screaming?
Was she terrified of the camera aimed at a grove of pine trees
Disappearing in the mist behind her?
Or was it the hound dog barking in nightmarish dreams?

9.
Whatever, arise old friend, walk again
the meandering path home where waits
The New York Times' best seller: it is a must

Read tonight while brown men toil, their color
Turning bloody red in the sun in that sad country
Of shattered windows and vanished dreams.


Caption, from left to right and down: downtown LA, USA, shot from the 5th floor of Sinai-Cedars Hospital; Vivo city, Singapore; Burnham park, Baguio city during a Panagbenga parade; farmers harvesting rice in San Mateo, Isabela; stopping for gas on the way to Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, where Manny Pacquiao fought Oscar de la Hoya (middle photo).

"Quotations"

"Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it."--Rene Descartes, Mathematician and Philosopher

"Your own soul is nourished when you are kind, it is destroyed when you are cruel." --King Solomon

"Happines depends upon ourselves."--Aristotle

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates."--Martin Luther King, Jr.

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he."--King Solomon

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke it."--Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

"When the heart is set at right, then the personal life is cultivated. When the personal life is cultivated, then the home lif is regulated. When the home life is regulated, then the national life is orderly. And when the national life is orderly, then the world is at peace."- Confucius

"Your emotions affect every cell in your body. Mind and body, mental and physical, are intertwined."--Sports psychologist Thomas Tutko of California's San Jose State University

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."--Persian proverb

"Greatness is always built on this foundation: the ability to appear, speak and act, as the most common man."--Shams-ud-din Muhammed Hafiz

"Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who burn our finger."--Stephen Vizinczey, Hungarian writer

"A non-doer is very often a critic, that is, someone who sits back and watches the doer, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk and change." --Dr. Wayne Dyer

"Creation is only the projection into form that which already exists."--Shrimad Bhagavatam

Palanca Literary Awards board of judges

Tiempon a kuestionaran dagiti mangbukel kadagiti hurado ti regional division ti Palanca Literary Awards. Iti naudi a pasalip, saan koma a naghurado ti maysa kadagiti tallo ta dina met pay naipakita iti kabaelanna iti Iluko, uray man ngata no eksperto daytoy iti kritisismo ti literatura. Dimi kuetionaran ti maysa kadagiti nangabak. Ngem saan koma a naghurado ti editor a pagpapaayanna.Maikkan koma dagiti dadduma a mannurat iti gundaway nga aghurado iti Palanca.

Critiques

PETER LA. JULIAN

REKUERDO/MEMENTO: DANDANIW ILOKO ITI KALLAUTANG

(first of four parts)

WINCHESTER, CALIFORNIA--Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD, one of the leading critics of Ilokano literature and writer in Iloko has come out with a book on the Ilokano diaspora. The book, entitled, " Rekuerdo/Memento," is actually an anthology of poems written by Ilokano poets based in the Philippines, Hawaii and the US Mainland. Formerly with the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Dr. Ariel, as friends call him, currently coordinates the University of Hawaii Ilokano Language and Literature Program, billed as the only Ilokano-degree granting program in the world.

The 192 page- book was published by IWAH Press, Hawaii, in collaboaration with Timpuyog dagiti Mannurat Global Press and the Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies.

The Iloko poems were translated and edited by Dr. Agcaoili, who also wrote the book's critical introduction. We are presenting here Dr. Ariel's critique on the works of Philippine-based mannaniw including that of this writer. Let me start with my own daniw which was published in the 1990s in Bannawag, the Iloko weekly:

Awan ti addanto panawen/Ita nga aldaw isu ti inton bigat/Pagammuan, sumallukoben ti malem/Idinto nga agarudok ti rabii/Kas iti naulimek a mannanakaw.

/"Yanmo iti daydi nga agmatuon?/No saantayo a nakidangadang/Aragaag dagiti anniniwan/Ket limned met dagiti tiempo/Iti ginget ken sipnget- lagip./Tunggal suknalak ti Padsan/Makitak ti adu a nagkurosan/Ken ti pakasaritaan ti biag:

/Panagungar iti tudtudo/Pannakatay iti kalgaw./Ngem ad-adda ti ipupusay/Ta awanen dagiti kannaway/Uray dagiti kali ken pagaw/Nakapsut metten ti agus/Nasam-it a danum ti panunot./

Namin-adu nga inurayko ti kasaor/Ken ti talukatik, daeg ken dam-eg/Anansata awanen dagiti agsapa/Awanen, awanen dagidi, Veronica./Saan a mapuotan ti agdama/Kellaat lattan a simmalipengpeng/Sabali a pagilian ti kararua/Natadem man kuko dagiti darikmat/Ditoy, di pimmanaw ti panawen/Kankanayon nga adda isidir/Karayan a sinakup ti kadaratan.*

Dr. Agcaoili's critique:

"In Padsan: A Vision/Padsan: Maysa a Sirmata, Julian confronts his memory of Padsan, the river of his city, the river of his youth, the river that sustained him through all the years of his wandering from Laoag to Oscariz, in Isabela and other places that had claimed him because of his profession as a writer and because of his personal obligation to his family whose members have gone on to live lives abroad. But it is in Isabela where that sense of stability has found him--or where he found, establishing a home there and where his children have an investment in memory. We can not say the same kind of investment of his Laoag, the place beyond the mountain ranges, the place that depresses to the sea to flatten into an almost dry earth and then to a vast body of water.

"In a direct address, Julian quizzes Veronica but he could as well be quizzing the river itself when one knows the environmental facts surrounding Padsan, with this river easily substituting for Veronica. If we follow this logic and we put in the medieval theological context of Veronica, we can easily push for this substitution."

Regarding Joel Manuel, who has won several awards in fiction in the Annual Palanca Literary Awards, regional division:

"In "To our Lost Country", Manuel unabashedly tells us the raw and ugly truth that we need to hear--or read: "Take me for my word: We are homeless/In our lost country, its ground shifting, loose." There is nowhere more poignant in this rendition when he flatly tells us what kind of a homeland have we got: "It disowns us in ignorance, this land/And we flee across the Western waves/To that other side of our dreams/To the savage wilds of the heart and memory.Foreign and alien, strange and unfamiliar/And no we have learned to call our country."/

"Having no choice but to head the call of the first principle of survival, he tracks down our tracks, those of us who have called it quits with the homeland and have started life anew where the feet have led us, where the spirit of a life of bounty and contentment and goodness have brought us."

"In "The Young Evening/Agur-uray dagiti Sardam", Nesperos talks to an unnamed person who has left, presumably to a place that has snow, and declaring, sure and certain and in keeping with the Ilokano way of awaiting someone else's coming home, that of awaiting someone else's coming home, that the teasing lizards's "noise zwait/like the sleeplessness on the railings of stairs.'

"In the coming home of the travellers, the poet makes a pointed reference to the greed of airport people, those factotums of government agency that it made certain that they can get something from those returning home in the form of "pasarabo" or gift. He does not see it that way, of course, but calls this greed--as it should be. He talks of young evenings waiting for the homecoming to come about, but in the intercises of the act of waiting are the reference to pain both for the one who is coming home and the members of the home he is going back to, he is coming home to. He tells us the wounds of leaving, that will never be healed, and the footprints that get erased/by your absence that has no end
(Maituloyto)

caption: The River Padsan in Laoag City, from the Gilbert Bridge.

http://pedrolajulian.blogspot.com/

CASURATAN TI BIAGCO

The book with the Title, "Casuratan ti Biagco," an Iluko manuscript that dates back to the last years of the 19th century, was written in cuadernos in elaborate script by Don Sabas Gaerlan, from Tagudin, Ilocos Sur, according to Jane G. Gaerlan, a great granddaughter of the writer. Jane labored for 20 years reading the book, on and off, translated it, except the poems and essays,and published it in book form with the same title.

We had hope to read the story in the Internet but could not acces it. Have contacted Jane, originally from Baguio, through her e-mail address. The book was published by authorhouse and can be purchased from authorhouse.com and Amazon. Buy it from authorhouse so Jane can have the royalty.

A copy of the book arrived in the mails. I emailed Jane and thanked her for the privilege of being the first Ilokano writer to read the book. Jane works as a nurse in Chicago but lives in Tinsley Park.Illinois, with her daughter and a cat, according to her. Later, when I wrote about "Casuratan" in the Facebook, Georgina Troxel, originally from Santiago, Isabela, who lives in Texas bought a copy of the book through amazon.

Does the book validate some of the events of Philippine history? Like, for exmple, the retreat of the Katipuneros led by Aguinaldo to Cervantes where Don Sabas was teniente del pueblo, according to the book?

Chapter 10 of the book tells of the retreat of the Aguinaldo forces to the town and the death of General Gregorio del Pilar in Tirad Pass. The detail could be checked with Philippine history books. Reading it, I was asking why the youngest general of the Philippine Revolution went back to Angaki, near Tirad Pass, to engage the estimated 400 American forces that included Macabebes (from Pampanga) the following day they arrived in Cervantes, tired and exhausted crossing rivers and mountains to their temporary refuge. Forty Katipuneros against 400 superior American soldiers?

The Timpuyog Journal, magazine type in glossy paper, started serializing "Casuratan
ti Biagco" in its October 2010 issue. TJ is the bi-monthly publication of Timpuyog dagiti Mannurat iti Iluko iti Filipinas, the national association of Ilocano writers who write in the language.

Singapore Sojourn

SiNGAPORE--For the third time, we are in this Lion City or Singapore (from the words singa, lion and pura), where things keep moving as if this rules-based island is always on the go, leaving behind other countries in terms of development and wealth. What did not exist the last tim we were here are there: brand ne spic and span highways, the world's biggest observation wheel--it reminds me of the ferris wheel during Philippine fiestas-- the world's second biggest casino, and a 4-story hotel built on reclaimed land in Sentossa, a tourist come-on, which has several beaches, one of which is named Palawan.

And many more including various buildings and structures in the last stages of completion.

This 9th priciest Asian city (Tokyo is the most expensive city in Asia and the world) survived the worldwide financial crisis and is back again as one of the earth's financial lords.

The Singapore Flyer, billed as the world's biggest observation wheel, sits atop a 3-story terminal with an array of shops and dining halls. We rode in one of the Flyer's 28 capsules ( a sort of a passenger coach with table and chairs) and had a half an hour ride that gave us a 360 view of Singapore and the surrounding islands, including Indonesian Batam now being developed as a commercial and tourist area.

From the glass windows, we saw the lights stretching from one end of Batam to the other. It was seven in the evening, the sky was clear, and our glass-covered capsule was almost on the uppermost position. Nearby, we could see in its entirety the structures of $3.5- billion Marina Integrated Resorts at Marina Bay where the world's second biggest casino is located. MIR consists of three high- rise gleaming buildings topped by a surf board-shaped park surrounded by trees.

Fare is S$29.50 per person, but you could occupy the whole capsule by yourself or with someone for S$274.00. At that time a couple--a man and a pretty Asian lady--had a capsule by themselves and they must have the time of their lives during the ascent in that 30-minute ride amidst the glittering lights of Singapore and Johore, Malaysia to the north, not to say Batam.

The Straits Times, the island state's biggest circulation daily, carried an article about the Marcoses and their hidden wealth in its in its June 10, 2010 issue. It was accompanied by Agence's France-Presse photo of Imelda and daughters Imee and Irene.
The picture showed the former First Lady, now an Ilocos Norte Congesswoman, looking for something inside her bag and Imee (in red T-shirt) and Irene (in checkered red polo). They were sitting on plastic chairs, with a crowd in the background, who could have been attending a program for them in Paoay, Ilocos Norte. The story, bi-lined by the newspaper's law correspondent, was about the Philippine government filing a multi-million lawsuit against the large estate of Ferdinand Marcos before the Singapore courts. The suit, according to the story, stemmed from a 2003 court order in Manila which allowed the Philippine government to claim US$658-million worth of the Marcos family's assets previously held in Switzerland. Some of the money, held in escrow by the Philippine National Bank, was deposited in the Singapore branch of the German-based WestLB.


about to be completed

Arrival in Singapore

For the third time, we are in this Lion City or Singapore (from the words, singa or city, and pura, city). We arrived here in the afternoon of June 3, after a three and a half-hour flight from the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport at Clark via Cebu Air Pacific. We were met at the Budget Terminal of the Changi International Airport by our son Christoffer, who works in a semi-conductor company here, and our two grandchildren-- John Philip, 8, and Christian Paul,12-- sons of Rene, another son who also work in the same company. We piled into a taxi to North Serangoon Avenue, where our sons rent an apartment on the 5th floor of a 15-story flat.