FASCISTS AND ILOKANO FASCISM

   Philippine national artist Virgilio Almario has reportedly developed orthographies of the country's different ethno-linguistic tribes that include Ilokanos. Almario is a Tagalog writer who once tampered with a Malacanang document but he got away with the misdeed.

     He is supported by a certain Joel Lopez, a high education official in the province of Ilocos Norte. He is a non-writer and can not write one single Ilokano sentence, according to a universal/prescribed orthography. He has also developed his own Ilokano orthography that is now being used in the public schools in Ilocos Norte. The Ilokano orthography is used in widely-read publications in the Ilocos.

     For imposing their respective versions of  orthography, Almario and Lopez have been criticized by writer's group like Gumil Filipinas, the national association of writers. The duo has been thrown  various derogatory names and been branded fascists.

     We understand the megalomaniac Almario and his deluded acolyte Lopez. Their outside behavior is just a reflection of their respective mind-set.

      This is also the case in the Ilokano writing community, where fascism is endemic. Needless to say, there are Hitlers like the editor who has banned writers in the pages of the magazine because the latter made snide remarks against his close relative,  who allegedly mismanaged the funds for a planned house of mannurat.
   

     

    

Aurora Park in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, Northern Philippines

FIGHTING OUR UMBRA

To friend Sonja and grandchild Denise:

Remember our subversive nature.

The battle is always within: To rescue ourselves from our own umbra and be whole and glowing again albeit impermanence.

Impermanence. As in nothing is permanent, as the body that will eventually weaken and die. In the interim, our dark side may be a shade but it will break out like a prisoner in isolation and destroy us in the blink of an eye.

So where do we go from here? To earth, to dust that will be carried away and scattered by the wind that goes on and on and on?

Marga Denise De los Santos  Julian 

"Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. " --Eckhart Tolle, in "The Power of Now"

The Girl Coming Out Of Padsan River

     She was a wisp of a girl, no more than 12 years of age. She was coming out of the river, a water jug on her head. Seconds later, she was making the ascent on the river bank, balancing  with her small brown hands the vessel containing sweet drinking water. When she walked the flat ground, the street where I lived, I caught her smile but her eyes essayed a long narrative of sadness. They were poor like us, with no source of water except the river.

***
     "The patient has to start by treating his illness not as a disaster, an occasion for depression or panic, but as a narrative, a story. Stories are antibodies against illness and pain."  ---Anatole Broyard

Notes To Josefino Zabala, Ex-future Nationalist Writer*

*the whole poem is included in the blogger's anthology of English-Ilokano poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger"




1.

Aristocratic fingers
Neither walk the yellow pages
     Of history.
Nor do they feel the pulse
Of the now-barren country
Whose impatient offsprings
Have gone away, lost
.....
,,,,
---
And the longing knows no end:
Who will miss the cool hills
     Of Sagada and Samoki?

2.

,,,,
Pinned against our cheek.

3.

The last stanza consists of 19 lines
,,,,
...
Tat end with:

By the tongues of fire-throwers
     And the politicians

THE SOCIALLY-SUPERIOR ANIMAL

"Ti kadagsenan a krimen ket isu ti panagulimek."--Carlos Fuentes


Reminder to the architect who unwittingly slips into the domain of wasps and bees and got stung and bruised and bloodied. Not because the insects were angry but because he entered their territoy:

"When two creatures meet, the one that is able to intimidate his opponent is recognized as socially superior, so that a social decision does not always depend on a fight; an encounter in some circumstances may be enough. "--Hediger.

Also a friendly reminder to onion-skinned native writers.

Note to the Madrid-based Ilokano writer Delia Caguioa Guran--she has an anthology of Ilokano poetry-- who commented on FB something like a word of praise for the blogger's poem, "Dagiti Litania ti Namnama ken Pannakapaaymi/ The Litany of our Hopes and Frustrations":

Why are they afraid to confront the issue of the unfinished house? Apay a kasda la ampo a sumgar iti uray la nga no madakamat wenno maipasagid (terminoda daytoy) daytoy a parikut?

The image of the organization has been tarnished because of the patta that still stands today by the sea (from a certain vantage point, that part looks like Waikiki Beach in Honolulu). A reminder of the "corruption and cheating" allegedly committed by some writers, according to JB, also a writer and architect of the failed project.

Apay nga arsagidda  a maibutaktak daytoy maipagarup a saan a nasayaat nga aramid? Idi 2005, impakaammo toy numo  iti dua a bangolan a mannurat ti maipapan iti di natuloy a balay.  In fact one of them, PB, wrote to the then president of the organization, a lawyer, about this perceived anomaly but it appears that his letter was ignored. (By the board that was supposed to tackle the issue which the writer PB termed "dugol?")

Touche!

A RAINY SUNDAY

A rainy Sunday. Watered the grafted lemon trees yesterday.

The blogger and his grandchild in Singapore. His father, an ECE, works in a multinational company in the sixth wealthiest nation in the planet.

Two of the blogger's collection given as gifts to two Ilokano writers in the Philippines.

Winchester, CA

 .

'NO TO INTOLERANCE! NO TO MINDLESS TERRORISTS!
HAIL, AMERICA. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Memories of places in the old country

Bridge to Potia, Ifugao in North Philippines. The River is Magat that flows to the outlying villages of San Mateo, Isabela.

The main canal of the  Magat River Irrigation System that passes through the old village of Oscariz, Ramon, Isabela

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."--Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
"Forget injuries; never forget kindness."--Confucius