gyzmorph

MY BANANA REPUBLIC

            A lot of things have happened to me since the last blog I wrote and it’s just so hard to blow through a straw a milkshake full of experiences to the next table so I decided to start with recent observations of my fellow human beings which God put in front of me for some reason (and I know He deliberately does this really! Again for some reason…). These reasons though, expected sometimes, defy all logic.

            Take for example a recent experience I had with my father’s household help. I say my father’s because just right before the Christmas season was to come into full swing a chemical spill occurred in the public high school building right behind my house. And with this, several policemen with a camera crew come barging into our place with facial masks and flashlights, like in the movies when they’re about to tell you that the aliens have landed or a sudden virus had just blown airborne or maybe the dead coming back uncontrollably to life and now they’re headed here such as how George Romero would want you to hear; SIR, YOU MUST EVACUATE SIR!! Don’t be mistaken though, it was something like that! Only this time they tell us nicely that there is a chemical spill, without mentioning exactly what chemical really, and for our own protection we must evacuate. What a bummer of a sunday afternoon do I get!! The camera crew was for failsafe reasons I presume as they were getting all our names and addresses in case we sue. Who do I sue? Hehe, the mayor I suppose? But the mayor, being heavy with legal media foresight, employs a camera crew with elections nearing and all to make sure who will be his future enemies as he dons chemical gloves in front of the press on the other side of the street since there is a law outlawing schools to possess such chemicals and he might get it. Right? Watcha tink? Anyway, before I get carried away with my despise for politicians, we evacuate obediently.

            What does this sub-plot got to do with my father’s household help and logic?

            Here it is..

            As I was evacuated hurriedly, I notice no evacuation center in sight. God, what was I thinking? Not even the

United States

had evacuation centers after hurricane Katrina so why should my banana republic have? So with two minicars, 20 pillows and 3 matresseses (what a sight!) I get to beat Sena’s formula one pit stop record and head for my dad’s.

            At my dad’s, I encounter 1 driver, 2 houseboys, his maid, the maid of his maid (since his maid will be rendered ineffective due to 3 children running around she gets a maid as well–fantastic don’t you think?How she pays her I don’t know..my banana. Only in my banana can this be possible!), my bored tenants, their neighborly friends, the friends of their friends, and the squatters area. Yes..inexplicably in that order and fashion. I meet the entire community. AND THE FUN BEGINS.

                            Continued…….

"Kill everyone over ten!" - General Jacob H. Smith

Before we crucify the ignorant Pamie (http://www.pamie.com/ archives/ pamie/ open_up_and_say. html), let us educate ourselves so we can educate her and perhaps she will learn what it is to be Filipino. When the United States invaded the first Philippine Republic between 1898-1899, they aimed to destroy the Filhispanic-Catholic-educated state because everything the fledgling Filipino state stood and represented was already intellectually and characteristically superior enough to unearth any ulterior motives posed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’s (WASP) beliefs including the funding for the Spanish-American War that preceded the invasion. The WASPs also tried to downplay the Filipino-American War to a simple skirmish. This is how stupid the Americans wanted us to appear already at that time (which explains Pamie’s attitude). Their only advantage was arms superiority. In desperation, they killed one-sixth (1/6) of the population at that time or 1,250,000 Filipinos in a span of only two years - relegating Filipinos who can read and write in Spanish to mere animals. In Balangiga, Samar, the Balangiga massacre was mostly composed of children as General Jacob H. Smith announced, "Kill everyone over ten!" This was done in fear of the Filipino character that had developed way before Jose Rizal’s time which was actually European. And anything tainted with Hispanic origins had to be erased because along with the Fil-Hispanic language came a superior I.Q. that could relegate the Americans to Pamie’s headway. ——–More to come

THE PROPHET IN JOSE RIZAL

…”Y despues una epoca empezo para los Filipinos. Pequeno por pequeno jan olvidado sus tradiciones antiguas, sus memorias de su pasado. Jan olvidado de escribir, sus cantas, sus poesias, sus leyes, para namas puden aprender lecciones de estranjeros que no puden escuchar: un moralidad y aesthetico differente del herencia de su raza, su propio clima y maneras de sentir. Entrando bajando ja, jaciendo pequeno en frente de sus mismas ojos. Tenia verguenza de que es de el y de su pais para namas admirar cual qier es estranjero y bobo. Su espiritu dejado dejecta y rendido.   

  Jose Rizal, Filipinas dentro de cien anos, (1899)

…”Then a new era began for the Filipinos. Little by little they lost their ancient traditions, the memory of their past. They forgot their writing, their songs, their poems, their laws, in order to learn by rote alien teachings they did not understand: a morality and an aesthetics different from those the race had inherited from its climate and ways of feeling. They went into a decline, belittling themselves in their own eyes. They became ashamed of what was their own and their nation’s in order to admire and praise whatever was foreign and unintelligible. Their spirit became dejected and surrendered.”

Jose Rizal, The Philippines inside 100 years, (1899)

            These are one of the aspects why Jose Rizal, despite being an ‘American made’ hero (I will discuss what ‘american made’ means if somebody questions why) was so venerated and respected—because of his ability to give not only rhetoric but theoretic and prophetic responses not only to his time but to actually reverberate into the future for us to take notice. Not of him but of what he was trying to convey to us. Yes ‘Us’ of the present, which is his future. He was conscious of this and people now and then knew of this superior super-consciousness (that’s why others even made him a god or a saint of somewhat remember? There is a rizalian religion that exists which even tried to steal his remains in bagumbayan, now luneta, in the early 80’s  ).

            Trivial as this may seem but this is the truth which now reveals itself in our vague presence in this new world defined only by the new heroes being your common OFW and Manny Pacquiao. Not knowing really who we are has placed us in a predicament of low self-confidence and low self esteem. And this is exactly what the Americans wanted to happen—to transform us to lost creatures in space to use us in every way possible without us knowing of what actually is happening. With our politicians so busy fighting and stealing nobody has room to invest in knowing who we really are! At the least dedicate a budget to our hanging tagalog idiom which hasn’t been ratified yet in congress to be our language that’s why we speak taglish! Even I am enslaved to this predicament as I struggle to remove the English out of my tagalog and the tagalog out of my English for my children’s sake. And now if you speak straight English you are congratulated with a call-center job. How quaint….Is this all we can be??? I envy Rizal. He knew his place.                                     Gimo

In retrospect to Karl’s recent blog…Finally he comments on the existence of a certain ‘jonas’. Even mentioning a choice of either hating him or living with him. Well i choose to hate him but then i can’t live without him(Hmmm.. he actually reminds me of my wife..). Anyway The belief that a certain jonas exists used to be a myth until a famed friend named Andrei indeed befell upon us such a mythbreaking reality. Like a faun existing in your wardrobe so to speak. Only the faun makes you wish you had a wardrobe to enter and to see  something new and inspiring while jonas..well. For one, I could not live without him for the fact that i believe in counting my blessings. In doing so, when i was at the bottom of my life, the pits of realities, in the crevices of my existence i reminded myself:"At least I’m not like him". The paradox made me feel much better.So much better that i thanked God for the balance he created in this world as i chose to understand what couldn’t be understood.; To learn to let go and let God and discover in Karl’s blog that YES!! There still exists a jonas. Probably galivanting araound in a siopao factory fred provided for him to steal those buns and get forgiven all over again for the next half century of his life.Until the next recourse would be to spot a typewriter MR. Betita found walking towards his front door or the shovel i asked him to use to dig my backyard which he sold for a measely emperador…Ah yes..the triflings with jonas. Looking back, life would never be the same… to be continued with LOOKING BACK.