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Direct Personal Experiences:
A
Passionate Living Moment
By
Pinky Serafica
(posted
july 8)
A
Have you ever had moments when you breathe in and realize joy, get a
glimpse of soul and the divine, know that the world and you are
one and seamless, and you hug yourself or agree with another heart that
"oh yeah, this is good!"?
And you gush telling people about it later, your words and movement
tumbling over themselves in frenzy, and you just cannot help but giggle
when crossing the street, and have strange tambays tease you,
"uy, in love siya!"
a month ago, i went to a talaandig community at the foot of mt.
kitanglad in bukidnon and apprenticed as dancer and drummer under the
mentoring of an indigenous artist, waway saway. having had his share of
naughty and nice art and culture circles, he went back to his tribe to
return the borrowed inspiration that spawned many an artwork and many a
musical piece. waway intuitively knew that i did not have the patience
for classroom-type sessions so the workshop went on while he was
farming, chanting to his kids, playing the flute to welcome sunrises
(shifting to drums later to wake me up) where one looks down instead of
up (much like being in mt. pulag), walking, jamming with other talaandig
youth -- in other words, my training was lived.
in between writing and directing, i was already performing with sheila-na-gig,
an all-women percussion, dance and chanting group. i felt though that i
needed some kind of grounding again, wishing my fingers and feet weren't
too stylized but rooted in what waway called as the "origin of
sound and movement," nature and community and me as my source and
reservoir. my last connection, after all, was years ago with datu gibang
of the ata-manobo -- him who spoke to me from his tattooed eyes knowing
no cebuano or tagalog. but that was different, he was getting the
warriors ready for a pangayaw (war) then because their land, and
lives, were threatened.
in kitanglad, i was given the name "banog" for hawk because
the talaandig's dance was patterned after the bird, and waway made me
simulate its flight while on the mountain slope, barefoot, weaving among
the pechay and kamatis -- "lipad, pinks, lipad!" --
with the kids, badu and ella joining the glide, making waway a pied
piper of sorts, the drums reverberating in the background.
my baptism came because everytime hawks appear, i'd go crazy in
excitement, running after them, and dancing. waway's family and other
locals though would also go crazy with excitement but for another reason
-- while the banog for me was a symbol of great freedom and
environmentalism, for them, they were, in all practicality, pests and
thieves, stealing chickens and other small livestock from an already
poor farmer, so their appearances weren't exactly welcome.
with waway i painted with earth (literally), a new hue was found in our
hike close to the river. we planned to drum and dance in a sacred place
higher up, and deeper into the forests but the rains said i should just
come back. sultan, the tribe's youngest hunter, told me of a dream about
deer and invited me on a hunt -- which meant the keeper of deers was
ready to give up one of its own to our realm, but i am a vegetarian and
still aghast at killings. erwin ("kidagaw") tells me sultan
gets sick if he doesn't up and run with his dogs and spear, if he dares
defy the keeper and his summons.
waway's house leaked, and we shivered nightly from the cold that almost
always finds the many holes. the kettle and table are familiar with
vegetables and dried fish, meat is a stranger. packed ketchup which got
lost in my camping pack was a delicacy. when his kids have need of
medicine that herbs cannot treat, he runs to friends in malaybalay.
teaching at the living school which he helped found does not pay, at
least for dinner or clothes or a new paintbrush. the tribe is poor,
gambling is an easy out, and shabu has not gone its rounds yet nor
stayed, because they can't afford it.
and yet waway stays, and erwin is getting ready to build his own little
space, offending deeply his middle class family in the city. they thank
me for the gift of presence, because it was the strongest argument for
the other talaandig youth to be talaandig, and live talaandig. why else
would a city girl go all the way to learn talaandig?
though i still cannot salute the sunrise with my gift of flute and wind,
i drum everyday, and dance. it's the only promise i made after all, to
my teacher, that i will live it.
moonlight and sunflowers,
pinky
Too
Late the Tears?
By
Ding
Reyes
A
FEW years ago, I confronted the question of death and its painful
suddenness, when something dramatic happened right in our immediate
neighborhood. There was this family who lived right across our
apartment unit, such that our doors were practically facing each other,
and they had a lad of 19 years, whom I'll call "Laddie" in
this story.
I
frequently met Laddie along the shared driveway and I'd always notice
his cheerful smile. That's why I couldn't believe the one-liner
response I got when I was awakened early one morning by unusual
commotion by their door and asked its cause: Laddie, our
quick-to-smile neighbor, had just committed suicide. He did it
by hanging himself with an electric cord from the staircase of their
apartment unit, at a spot no more than ten meters from where I lay
soundly asleep. His parents and siblings were, of course, much
closer.
As
I jumped out of bed, I heard the whole neighborhood thrown into
commotion. There was a cacophony of mixed conversations-- there was
sobbing, shouting, expressions of disbelief, shouted orders for one to
get a doctor, a priest, or the barangay chairman.
I
was to learn later that sparks of conflict in the family, which
occasionally led to explosions of verbal and even physical abuse with
him as a frequent recipient, had driven him to depression. He had other
personal problems, as well.
All
these thoughts were turning around inside my mind as I beheld Laddie in
a coffin that evening, with members of the family shouting out at his
face, amid all the sobbing, how much they loved him. I believe
they meant every word of it, every teardrop was coming from deep within
the heart, so to speak, but could he still hear any of it?
Yes,
they all loved him. And, apparently, they were very confident that
he knew this all along, that they had adequately expressed their love
for him all those years, despite their family's share of ruffles and
spikes of conflict that might have occasionally clouded the message.
Laddie's
death was much more painful for a family than most deaths because a
permanent sense of questioning, perhaps even a tinge of guilt, would
rankle: Why did he kill himself??? We loved him so!!! This wound
is not of the kind that heals fast and easy.
As
I stood watching in prayerful silence to one side of the small funeral
parlor, with an arm around the neck of my younger son who had
accompanied me to the wake, I asked myself, how sure I could be that the
people I love very dearly know fully well that I do. My own son,
whose body was pressed against mine, and his elder brother at home, how
much do they feel my love? How sure have I made them of it?
This had been very difficult, because I had to do alone as a single
parent the task of disciplining and of assuring of parental love, at the
time they were passing into adolescence.
Laddie's
suicide hit me hard at the heart because even as I had been quick to
smile back at his cheerful grins. I never got to strike a conversation
with him. If I had only known there was a tormented sould behind
that smile, I might have been able to help him somehow. There had
earlier been young men not much older than him, who had turned me into
their adopted "kuya," poured out their sorrows and dilemmas
right into my slightly oversized ears, listened to whatever words I
could manage to give, and months later, cheerfully thanked me for
helping them get through those trying times. As I had earlier told them
would happen, each would be laughing at himself and the problem
itself. These youngmen lived far away from my house and they got
to talk with me mainly by phone. But Laddie's front door was just
right across my own! And I was meeting him in our shared driveway
practically everyday!
To
snap out of the guilt mood I was starting to sink into, I told myself,
more convincingly this time, what I had been whispering then to Laddie's
bereaved father: The "Great Author" must have had plans for
him, plans that humans cannot expect, much less demand, to know.
Let us accept that Laddie has left us. What else could we do?
In
a way I may have been luckier than my neighbor and all others who have
lost loved ones to sudden deaths. A year ahead before Laddie's
death, my Lifepartner passed away after a lingering illness that
prepared her and all of us around her to confront philosophically and
with equanimity the question of death.
While
she vehemently refused to go along with the belief that cancer is
automatically a death sentence, and instead actively led in the
formation of a well-rounded support network for cancer patients and
their care-givers, she faced dying squarely at the time she already had
to.
And
she said she was bringing absolutely nothing from this life -- no
possessions, no attachments, perhaps not even memories. Shortly
before she died, she changed that a little -- but profoundly -- and said
she was bringing along only her spirituality, whatever spiritual growth
she was able to achieve in this life. Then she went back the "The
Source," her name for The Great Author.
There
remain a lot of questions surrounding the matter of death and
dying. I am contemplating them on-and-off over these years.
If we are to believe what has often been written, both Laddie and my
departed Lifepartner are deeply happy now somewhere beyond our human
ken. It is this sense of hope in happiness after death that I
found somewhat effective in consoling Laddie's father. And in
consoling myself.
Pray
for Laddie and for Cita? No, I think they're closer to God now, or
"more of God," after freeing themselves as souls
from the distractions of mind and body. We pray for them for
our own sense of closure and consolation. And they pray for
us. I think we are the ones who really need praying for.
Vicarious Experiences (coming from real life experiences of persons who
are directly known by the senders):
SANIB SINAG
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