IGME Files

Happy 'Dysfunctional' Christmas

    So what will be the day's news for our country during the holidays? Reduced crimes or no petty crimes at all? Cool. Even the communist rebels vowed a four-day ceasefire against the government forces. Great. Just because it's Christmas -- uncool.

     Reading an international news engine today at latimes.com, I read that a family of atheists in Illinois is seeking to overturn a state law requiring public schools to have a moment of silence everyday for "reflection and student prayer." You couldn't have a more interesting news on Christmas like that. This is only the tip of the iceberg. What I'm driving at is time and again we have used the holiday season as a vain reason to be considerate and kind (not bad), be merry and joyful (not bad as well) to achieve...World peace? Let's set aside issues and rest? Then what?

     If travelling for some is for pure pleasure, it has afforded me that and has also expanded my perspective. In the state of Maine I have learned, business establishments and some residence have flags in their own frontyard at half-mast. They are opposed to their government whose soldiers are being deployed and hoping if they could see their shadows back home. In America, people wear their self-imposed beliefs in their flag-bearing yard. Can we say that to Filipinos without the fear of being threatened, sued, lost or killed? Or do you still care?

     Last December 14, it was my first to attend the annual UP-College of Arts and Letters Faculty Follies (that is after my six-year undergrad). I was expecting the staff and the professors of each department would do a romp, a riot and fun althroughout, as what previously have been done. The Art Studies Department, with just a two-man show and a couple of musical accompaniers, performed a mini-"Pasyon" (Passion Play) with a twist. Prof. Edru Abraham (founder of the Kontra-Gapi fame) skillfully and gamely performed with the different masks and movements that represented the main characters at hand, while Prof. Roselle Pineda sang an otherwise painful journey of the Lenten characters vis-à-vis contemporary Filipinos' wretched plight. While ‘Mam Roselle, my former teacher, was wailing for Edita Burgos (the real-life mother of her still-missing activist-son, Jonas Burgos); Mr. Abraham echoed the parallelism of the profound anguish that Mother Mary was feeling at her crucified son Jesus.

    At that moment, something roused in me.

    At the UP Lantern Parade a few days later, it was STAND-UP’s (the leftist University student group) turn for their presentation and while they made noise about their causes, I overheard these two young female UP students at my back who deridedly said, “andyan na naman sila (here they are again).” They said that repeatedly until they finished.

     Have we totally lost our nationhood to indifference? Columnist Conrado de Quiros said so in his article, please click: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20071217-107249/Dysfunctional. I hope not. I’d rather whine this Christmas and do something than do nothing.

Breaking news: another broadcast journalist was slain in Davao. No zero crime today this Christmas.

Colors 1 -- Shades of Gray and Sepia of New York

    I was egged on by my good friend to post a blog again, this time about my travels in the US.  He was expecting not another goody-goody entry like giving up my airplane seat to someone and receiving a compli drink for that (hey, haven't I got a right to post anything?).  I got his point, it's very "untravel-like," to say the least.  Ironically, I have not had posted a travel piece at length here, pakagat-kagat lang, or in bits and pieces.   Before the prodding, I was on the verge of planning to write about the places I've been in recently -- the bountiful Davao, the private Talikud Island and Boracay (more on those soon). 

     I have not given anyone a reason why I havent wrote anything about my travels.  That's because I didn't think I have it in me to show it off other than what people see obviously in my pictures.  Another heavy reason is the places I found were ineffable and deeply personal, hence, the need to value the sense of anonymity.  Try as I my attempt to write here, I feel I am only touching the surface. 

     When we arrived in Manila from the US, it was Halloween.  Something had been bothering me thereafter.  I was being led to look back about the myriad colors I saw during my wandering times.  I felt haunted by that constant daydreaming, those lingering memories that stayed with me.  By what I meant by haunted, it's not the way I looked in this picture when I first set foot at Times Square in Manhattan last May, aptly called "City Lights." 

      
   This moment seemed magical; however, it only lasted as the glittering lights went off (which in Manhattan, never goes off until early morning).  The beautifully-framed boards were there to look at, but could I feel them?  To me, they just blinded and swallowed everything up. 

      If the commercial lights at Times Square didn't tickle my fancy, I have learned to appreciate the subdued colors of gray in paved roads and streets while bright yellow cabs passed me by; and the long-standing structures that borne the prevalent architectural times. 

     I have been a fan of sepia.  When I was three or four, I remember I saw a bird's eye view picture of a massive cathedral.  In it, I could only see dot-sized people swarming around the cathedral.  I was amazed to see the cathedral in sepia, washed aglow by the sun's rays.  I didn't know I could see a world of sepia and a semblance of that picture in flesh at St. Patrick's Cathedral at Madison Avenue. Though it is made of white marble, the church turns to sepia when the bright sun hits it. 

    Among the fewer buildings that I saw (given the limited time) in NY and had me astounded, color and otherwise, was when I saw the western entrance of the "Cathedral of Saint John the Divine" along Amsterdam Avenue.  THAT thing (and I mean THAT, being the third largest Christian church in the world) is massive.   My family and I were on the way to eat after the commencement ceremony and before the doctoral hooding of my sister, snaking our way to the avenues and streets.  When we turned around another side of the street, we saw this Gothic cathedral, comfortably sitting on its own grayish elegance and magnificence. I had to stop for a sec and took a snap.  I hardly breathed and gaped.  (My friendster's barring me to post another pic, so, no pic...).  I was completely awed I didn't even notice there's a scaffolding (an ongoing reconstruction was in place) at the right side of the facade.  I'm hardly a church-goer, but If I'm going to visit NYC again, I'll pay a visit to the cathedral, feel its cathartic presence, and make a wish. 

Next up:  The green and the whites