PERENNIAL FLOODING: SYMBOL OF LACK OF POLITICAL WILL

Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Why are our problems as a people highly repetitive? Are we advancing or regressing? The floods are perennially with us. Yet how many civil engineers do we graduate every year? Why aren’t all the civil engineers getting together to help solve the problems of flooding in the National Capital Region?

Talayan, Tatalon are inundated by floods every time it rains. Before in the 60’s it would take usually 5 days for the floods to come. But now it is only two to three hours. Why so? Number one, the children and adults have not been taught to dispose of foils, styrofoams and glasses properly. Around school grounds one will find lots of vendors using plastic bags for ice candy and other snack foods. What do the school children and the parents do after finishing off the foodstuffs? Most of them just throw the plastic by the sidewalk. Where is the MetroAide to clean up the place? None. They are all at the main streets, sweeping, trying to give the foreign visitors a “clean” view of the cities. Are there wastecans along the streets? None. “Ninanakaw Ma’am, eh” that’s the reason given by local officials. So if they are stolen what should be done? Tie up the waste cans on posts, or build concrete rectangular bins and place huge plastic bags in them.

Look at Araneta Avenue and you will find that the sides of the streets have blocked waters causing that swishing scenery everytime vehicles pass by. What is the cause of this? Poor engineering. The public works contractor did not provide for a large canal to handle the rain waters. The level of the sidewalks are the same as the middle grounds. So when the rains fall they just stay on the road and clog up the sides making it very difficult for the passersby and commuters to negotiate their way to their destination or even to get into a jeepney. What is the solution here? Ban those public works contractors that shortchange the public.

Now what should we do with floods? If you will look at the creek at Tatalon from a bird’s eye viewpoint, you will note that it has the tendency to wind its way. The waters start to get voluminous when it reaches the bridge along E. Rodriguez and seems to get stuck before the UE Ramon Magsaysay Hospital. On its way to Mandaluyong, the waters turn very slowly. Hence the problem here is that the siltation in the creek causes the waters to go slot on its way to the Pasig Riverl Instead it gets stuck in the nearby barangay causing havoc on lives and property.
So what is the solution here? Creation of dikes and digging down the creek to make it deeper. Simple? Very simple. Why couldn’t they do these? Will. Political Will. POLITICAL WILL.
Everyday I see those MMDA platforms on the creek along E. Rodriguez. But do they move at all? I never saw anything being dumped there save some small pieces of waste papers at one time or another. Yet. It stays there 24 hours a day. The workers move oh so slowly, like zombies. And they are numerous all the time, yet their work hardly moves. The waters still rise and rise after two hours of rainfall. What is the solution here? Remove flood control projects from the government. Give it to non-government organizations whose members have the hearts and minds to solve the problem of flooding.
Again, Political Will. What animal is that, some would ask cynically. Yet that is the lifeblood of change in any society. Without the need to really make changes, our life will forever be a ground for lazy, uncommitted and corrupt government officials together with their contractors out to make a fast buck on any government project. Forget change. Forget patriotistm. Let us all migrate. Is that the solution they want us to make so that they can lord it over here for centuries.
But if the civil engineers in our country would really bond together, affirm their love of country and draw up a plan which could be whipped up from the Dutch lessons on solving their floods, I am sure, we would get somewhere.

Painting: Winter, or the Flood, 1660-64
by Nicolas Poussin

ON LAND USE FOR ALL

By Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Is it development when huge tracts of land which should have been sources of food crops are converted into golf courses? Is it development when no alternative jobs await farmers and farmworkers and the land they till for decades of years are removed from their control?

Unfortunately the conversion of agricultural lands has not stopped despite all the reasons that have been put up by environmentalists and the social scientists who favor agricultural development over industrialization. The worst case I have seen is that of the conversion of rolling agricultural lands into a golf course up there in Forest Hills Antipolo, Rizal.

Passing eras
Sad, sad, sad. I could not ease the heaviness on my chest as I saw hectares and hectares of land which probably a year or two before used to be immersed in water to make the rice seedlings grow during this rainy season. Then I remembered the roads of Bulacan way back in the 60’s with its sidewalks full of vendors selling green ripe mangoes along roads from Marilao up to the last town going to Nueva Ecija from where my Mother hailed. Now the vendors are gone and must have shifted their businesses in the towns and cities to sell – of all things - cigarettes and candies instead.

An era is passing by or must have passed by already. New communities will be rising from those lands now, to be peopled by professionals, traders, students, and even the families of overseas Filipino workers as long as they can afford to give the deposit, the mortgage fees, or even pay cash for the house and lot that will be built.

The eras of women and men bowed down planting rice from early morn to late lunch, the spouse or the grandmothers with their heads wrapped in bandannas and carrying a basket of lunches for the planters and traipsing through the pilapil; the carabao leading the farmer as he plows the soil, nipa huts with coconut and fruit trees beside them – all these scenes and more farm scenes as those that the painter Fernando Amorsolo had painted ideally would soon be deleted in our landscape and worst of all, in our memories. Only the painter’s works would be the living legacy of what those lands used to be.

Our grandchildren and great grandchildren would no longer experience that grand feeling of making their feet touch the earth and grass, riding a carabao, climbing trees to pick fruits or even to get the eggs of birds or chickens nestled up the branches. They would have no memories of how our forefathers had used the land to make it bear fruits and grow crops.

Why, why should development be this way?

Endangered species
Yesterday, as the rains started to fall, I saw three cows seemingly in a hurry to walk up the concrete road of that broad expanse of green landscape which could have been a riceland before. Then they huddled and stood together like a team of soldiers feeling the warmth between their bodies and unmoving while the rains trickled down their bodies. What was in their mind? Could it be a feeling of anxiety over the narrowing of grasslands that they could graze on? Could it be fears of being slaughtered once their owner could no longer feed them in the long run? Could it be a feeling of hopelessness over the lack of appreciation of their abilities to provide milk?

I learned, at a seminar conducted by Ramon Mendoza, of an American product made up of colostrum which is extracted from cows. This has anti-cancer properties, can prevent hairloss, energize and rejuvenate and strengthen the cells of the body by 20 years.

If our country would build ranches in all the provinces with rolling hills and mountains, and then fill them with cows and carabaos, then we could have a thriving cattle industry capable of providing colostrum for this company to package into capsules. We would also have an unlimited supply of milk.

Thus, I felt a pang of loss over the plight of these endangered species, the cows. But as I gazed around, the trucks and cranes digging the soil, a felled huge tree with its roots rising up, and houses dotting the landscape here and there, I knew that all their fears are real. The cows – our carabaos are already endangered species a long time ago with the destruction of agricultural lands -- would soon be made redundant, inutile, and invisible as the race for sheltering the people who have overcrowded in MetroManila in search of jobs goes on.

What happens when the entire country becomes all concrete jungle and then just to view birds, animals, butterflies and plants we all have to go to a zoo or a park as they contain these flora and fauna which no longer exist naturally around us?

The more affluent could always pack up and go to other lands where care of their environment is paramount. But, we the “hoi polloi” who have to scratch the grounds to eat daily, could only sigh and pray that our country could still be an oasis of natural beauty.

Where to start
Should we view life without land as a natural phenomenon? What is life without the land? I think we know the answers to these already. The lack of care for the land brought about landslides in Leyte, Bicol and Antipolo. Fruits and vegetables which could be grown just in our backyard before are now very rarely raised and are hardly sold in the market except for those grown in Benguet and then have to be transported to metroManila, hundreds of kilometers away. Yet we know their nutritional values and their importance for our bodies to be healthy which then makes it imperative for them to be naturally grown and made abundant.

Starting young
I believe that love of the environment should start at home and in the nurseries as the children are learning how to read and write. The latter are at that stage of being most receptive in learning new things which they could carry with them in their adulthood later on.

Actually, there is still time to encourage the children and the youth to enjoy the natural scenery in reality instead of those on the television screens. Their senses will be made sharper as they touch, smell and feel the plants and animals.

But I see right now the high school students as the forgotten or ignored sector of our society. They are the last in the list of lacking any feeling for the environment– they throw the wrappers of their chewing gum, the plastic bags of their buko juice, the cigarette stubs, the barbecue sticks and the foil wrappers of chicheria just about anywhere. They smoke in great abandon polluting the air. They could care less if they bother other people inside the internet shops with their loud voices as they play violent computer games. Saddest of all they seem not knowledgeable at all nor do they care enough about what social issues are currently being discussed and analyzed. But once they face the computer to play games, they suddenly become very much alive. Isn’t there a distortion of educational priorities at this time?

Hence the Department of Education should mandate all teachers and principals to daily remind students to respect the environment and do something to make it stick in the minds whether they are in school or in the outside world. It should provide filmshowings and VCDs depicting the beauty and value of Mother Nature, and how the young and adults too could be active participants in protecting, preserving and conserving our natural resources.

Also, shelter communities should be turned into small villages with only a hundred or so families and still surrounded by greenery that produce food crops. This type of development I think is being implemented somewhere in the south of Manila. We must insist on this to prevent that time from coming when every fruit and vegetable that we eat have to be imported from other countries as what is happening now to our rice, our staple food. Hence, those local governments approving land use must be aware of the consequences of environmental decisions that could make the land barren.

I hope that my impressions would touch the nerve of all environmentalists and policy makers in our society. I also pray that think tank groups would be created to dig into the issues that I have raised and provide ultimate solutions on how we could raise generations of lovers of lands and Mother Nature.

Lastly, the President has to set the prime example of being an environmentalist by quitting to smoke. That actually can be very easy: he should always carry an orange fruit to munch whenever he feels that pang to puff a stick. Or he could imagine nicotine eating up every cell in his lungs its sticking like black tar on every globule of his lungs which later on would make him breathe with great difficulty. Lastly we must ask him if he knows how to meditate as this is a good tool for having great self control against all forms of addiction not just smoking.

Ancestral lands for everyone
Something connects me to the land as if my soul is deeply infused in it. I now recall Macliing, the Igorot leader against the construction of the Chico Hydroelectric Project in Northern Luzon, and his statement: “Why talk of owning the land when it is the other way around: the land owns us?” He said this during a bodong in his community, Bugnay, Kalinga in 1970 before he was murdered by the military. He emphasized the idea that the land is for everyone and not for a few thus expressing the Igorot belief of the communal ownership of all natural resources. (Note: The bodong is a peacepact meeting among all the elders of affected tribes and the people together with their guests from the lowlands. )

It is an ancient belief that has been handed down for generations in their tribal societies. It is the same belief of the Tingguians of Abra who resisted the setting up of the Cellophil Resources company in their ancestral lands which were supposed to be planted with cellophil trees. Cellophil is that element used by factories for making paper.

All over the world, tribal communities hold the same idea. It is the same belief that the Indians in North America held before they were conquered by the colonialists and which was why they resisted the incursions into their lands vehemently.

Gandhi echoed the same belief when he said, “The earth’s resources are for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” In other words, Land is for everyone. It does not need titling by anyone as they who have needs should be free to use it.



Holding Up the Land, painting by emma orozco 2010 now hanging at the office Ms. Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo, Ph.D., Dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development

RETHINKING URBAN LANDSCAPE

During the time of the Imeldific czarina and the dictator Marcos, the prevailing philosophy in MetroManila was - the true, the good and the beautiful. It was actually a reaction to the radical and Maoist artistic practice of depicting in huge streamers and building graffiti Marcos as a puppet of the US, the US as an imperialist, and the need for serving the people en masse -- mainly the working class.

Being in charge of a huge budget, Imelda built many edifices which look too grandiose and out of sync with the size of the Filipino people. You would not find any tinge of being Filipino in the external architecture of the Cultural Center (which looks like a huge toilet bowl according to one critic), and the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, for examples. They exhibit a non-Filipino design which is sad because the money used was that of the Filipino people. When you enter the buildings, you feel dwarfed by the size, as if you were inside the mouth of a huge box of concrete.

How come our Asian neighbors are able to come up with distinct building designs that could be labeled as theirs, whereas we, who have many college-educated architects hardly create or discover to create an architectural design that would be truly Filipino? Folks, kindly mention to me any building you would consider Filipino now.

What is a truly Filipino building to me must incorporate elements that can be found in the nipa hut like the triangular roofing, the capiz-shell windows, the texture of mats, etcetera. Unfortunately, such are usually reserved for application on homes instead of buildings that can be found along major commercial streets. Maybe students and faculty of architecture, aside from pouring over the need for green housing projects, could start inventing ways of designing buildings that truly represent the identity of the Filipino people's environment.

But right now, I am also uneasy about what is happening to the buildings around the major thoroughfares of MetroManila.

MetroManila is suffering from extreme destruction of the beauty of architecture of its buildings due to the unbridled placement of advertising billboards some of which even dwarf them.

At Espana you see a proliferation of small advertising billboards of small businesses which really cover the whole facade of the building. It is as if the office which put up the advertisement is the only one being housed in it. Ad billboards placed on the upper section of the building, just above the door height, are by restaurants, 2nd hand bookstores, printing and computer shops, etcetera. So while cruising along Espana, you will no longer be able to distinguish in what part you are since the billboards just cover every inch of what would give recognition to a street corner or so. Also buildings showing Spanish influence in their designs are slowly being destroyed instead of preserved.

Along EDSA- this highway is the worst- you can hardly see the beauty of buildings due to the building-size outdoor billboards. Everywhere you gaze, there is a huge billboard; even when you look out the car window while passing through a bridge. Your eyes are not allowed to rest at all from the many sights of commercial ads urging you to get lured, to touch, to buy a product. Building-size ads of youthful human models abound, sometimes in elegant clothes, other times in skimpy attire -- a brief or a bikini which are truly irrelevant scenes when one is going to the office, with some faces smiling, pouting, morose and jolly.

Sexy ads
Can you refocus your mind to getting into bed again in bikini while you are riding the train going to Makati? Instead of making you feel refreshed and in great vigor to face the pressures of business and employment, the ads entice you to go back to bed.

(This is why probably you see a lot of couples now moving about in different poses: the girl putting her head on the shoulder of the man beside her while seated inside the train, the jeep, the bus, and even while standing on a street corner. They project the Filipino people as to-hell-do-I-care individuals ready for bed 24 hours a day. The girls' propensity to act in this manner project themselves as insecure as if they must do so in order to insure that the eyes of the men are on them and not wandering around. One girl wearing short shorts had her hand in between the legs of her boyfriend inside the jeepney. (What next move would come to your mind given that scene but foreplay.) then the ads targetting women consumers make the women feel insecure about their (our) own bodies -- as they focus on youth through cosmetic surgery, fashion instead of practical clothes for any kind of weather, junk instead of healthy foods; living artificially instead of communing with nature and many more.

Well this type of consumerist thinking is also reenforced by noontime shows -- by classification should be for adults only as they are take offs from nightclubs and bar shows -- which present thighs galore in short shorts,and the dancers pumping up and down. When the camera only focuses on the dancers from waist up and they are doing this movement, what image do you get but one who is having a good time in bed with another. The movements imitate the sex act altogether. Now I really pity those TV hosts who started out as wholesome figures but now have to follow the trend displaying their thighs in order to stay in the highly competitive industry for recognition -- not for their talents to speak and deliver a sensible spiel but for their youthful physical attributes.)

I think that the advertising industry has created individualistic (selfish or self-centered?) and hedonistic mindsets of monstrous proportions so that the unmindful and uncritical youth are now ready to surrender to every message and imitate what it churns out to be destructive of certain fundamental values we hold dear. The industry has mistaken freedom of expression with freedom to corrupt the minds of the youth and to limit their sights to false stardom and recognition based on false representations and values. It has also focused on using sex as the underlying come-on tactic to make the consumers buy or patronize a product or service.

Outdated billboards
Take note also of bus stops. The roofs of the waiting sheds there are dwarfed again by billboards -- some lit up for nighttime viewing. You read about this and that movie opening at such and such a date. Most of the time, the date is already months old and yet the billboard is still there. So your tendency is to calculate how old the movie is.

When you go through the sidestreets, you will notice here the political ads placed on houses dating back to 2004, 2007 and 2010. You see faded pictures of candidates running for this and that position. Then a barangay office here in Quezon City is full of tarpaulins of the winners congratulating the people for Christmas, for graduation, for fiesta etcetera, which I suspect is their preparation for the next elections. They want the people to always remember their faces and their names through the tarpaulins, never mind if the building architecture cannot be viewed anymore. (Yet the barangay does not display on billboard the kinds of projects it will fund for the years of administration.)

Manila billboards
What really makes me angry is the way Manila has handled advertisements near the City Hall and at Plaza Lawton. The nationalistic meaning of the sculpture of Bonifacio and the Katipuneros holding tabak is ridiculeled by a liquor advert. It seems as if Bonifacio and his society drank that liquor in order to feel love of country. Quite sickening, isn't it?

Then, approaching Lawton from Pasay, where the Intramuros, the American period Philippine Post Office and the Metropolitan Theatre buildings are situated, we are barraged with moving LED ads on top of the waiting shed. Instead of our feeling awe and proud of the beauty of Lawton with all the historical buildings around, we are made to feel in a hurry to make a profit, to earn so we can buy the products advertised there. Whoever allowed that LED to be placed there has just made us devalue our national identity. Why because those buildings reflect our past as a people.

I learned from Lucille Tenazas, a designer from Parsons The New School for Design in New York who delivered a talk at the Ayala Museum that billboards are not allowed to hang up the buildings there. And so to circumvent that she designed the letters P-a-r-s-o-n-s as individually sculpted and hanged them by the top of the doorway of the building lying down. She could not be faulted with having violated the city regulation since the letters were not covering the building at all. Today, it has become a kind of landmark design for New Yorkers because it was an aesthetic reaction to a government policy.

To maintain the historical beauty and elegance of MetroManila which I subscribe to, I would opt for the creation of an aesthetic task force composed of noted architects, painters, visual artists, landscape artists, and urban and rural planners from the academe and practicing fields.

Let us not allow her to remain in this condition -- a place where advertising instead of aesthetics rules.

I would also suggest that short shorts attire be banned at universities and colleges, and along the major streets of MetroManila. Why so? Short shorts are for loafing around. They attract the roving eyes of young male students instead of making them focus on their studies. Girls and women who wear them show their lack of sensitivity to the cultural values of people, especially of those coming from the provinces whose idea of womanhood includes covered thighs, among others.

Advertisers must stop treating the people as non-thinking buyers and consumers.

Sure, capitalism which uses advertising propels business and encourages the people to work, and earn a profit from their efforts. But the system has to be directed to move along lines that bring out the best and noble traits of the people putting value on love of country, as well as love of fellow human beings especially the disadvantaged and the marginalized.

ON NOT BURYING HISTORICAL MEMORIES

WHAT IS BLACKMAIL?

Have the Filipino people ever succumbed to blackmail?

The great problem now of the people is how to face those who are blackmailing us. You give this and we will give this to you. You do this and you will earn this much. You follow me and you will live in heaven.

So, after so many years of being a captive of an administration, which, in order to exist “legally” had to blackmail the State protectors, number one, and legislators, number two, who would render her election legitimate, our folks now have imbibed or are being made to imbibe a value system that puts pragmatism over all principles of decency, true democracy, and respect for human rights.

This is now one big problem for us: how to erase that value system and allow us as a people to exist with dignity.

Why should we face this problem now? We are at a crossroads of having to choose our own pride and dignity over a blackmail system which would render us inutile, and real “drugged mules” in history. Why should we say “drugged?” Because it is quite heady to know that we could earn trillions just by signing that deed to declare a dictator that we deposed a hero right in our own shores.

Should we erase our world reputation as the people who started it all: that revolution to revert back to democracy, boot out a dictator bloodlessly, install a woman president who was not a politician but who possessed all the virtues of helping to regain our pride as a people to the world, and restore legally that free expression of our rights, whether through the press, radio, tv, film or assembly, among other rights? How short our memory is if we do.

Is history created by a people or a few individuals? Who moves a society to act in totality, to alter systems and to restore first of all what is called humanity? No, majority of our people have braved living in foreign shores to help their families earn a more than a decent lifestyle here. They ventured out to foreign lands, strange cultures and sometimes overly arrogant and aristocratic superiors just to work and earn funds that they could remit back home to their loved ones.They were welcomed because they came from a country that taught the world how people power can be a tool for acquiring dignity and respect in society.

So for some quarters to blackmail those who have been left behind to sign that “death sentence” to declare a dictator a hero is not only erasing our national image as noble advocates for free expression, which by the way has become a model for imitation in all other parts of the world, albeit not successful in some, like Germany, Russia, Poland, Hong Kong, and now, in African and the Middle East countries. Rather, it is creating cretins of us all, unable to withstand financial blackmail, unworthy of all the sacrifices of all our martyrs for our country to earn its equal status in the world as a democratic nation during the anti-colonial periods and beyond.

Worse of worsts, is it not a strange suggestion to declare a dictator a hero in even one square inch of soil in our country? A dictator is a dictator is a dictator just like Hitler, Ghaddafy, that Yemen president and that fake president we had for 9 years. They are in their posts in order to kill all protests against their holding on to power. They will use all means – even bomb out of existence their own people, kill their political opponents, journalists and media practitioners who write and speak against them, in order to be installed, as well as to maintain themselves in power for life. And that happened right here in our country which we pray and hope would not happen again.

Not a square inch
Why should we not give even a square of an inch or millimeter to declare a dictator a hero, military and otherwise? Why, because every square millimeter of soil in our country should be treated as sacred. Our true heroes and heroines shed their blood, sacrificed their whole lives here on this soil in order to make our country shine equally among all nations. They organized and led movements to show to all colonizers and the world that we are a people that have principles and ideals, that the brown race is equal to all races in the world. Hence, we are the first country in Asia to be freed from colonial rule, and the first in the world to successfully launch a people power movement.

Now what are the consequences of giving military honors to a dictator? First of all, was he a soldier at all? Don’t we know that all his medals were fake? And his being a commander-in-chief then was forced upon on the people? That he did not earn his presidency (which carries with it that title of being a commander-in-chief) through legitimate means? So why give honors at all? What would be the basis for that? Honors are given by a people and for us to have been subjected to dictatorial rule, then to make us honor that dictator makes us the laughing stock of everyone.

Spitting on our people power image
By having a part of our country be declared as a “heroic” place for the burial of dictator is to teach our children that they could follow his life – rule as a dictator, kill as many people as you want, and then ask to be declared a hero. It means writing and re-writing all elementary and high school books to make them carry the message that people power was a queer phenomenon and that now we are spitting on that 1986 image of ours. It also means telling the countries of the world, “Hey Folks, we are back to square one as if 1986 never happened at all. Sorry about that but we need money. Money makes the world go round, you know.” And so, we should return all those accolades that we received from them after we had booted out the dictator, his family and his cohorts.

Those who are pushing for the declaration of a dictator as a hero are advancing a nightmarish future for our children and our children’s children. They are pressuring us to erase all books that have written him as a dictator. They want us to eat what we have vomited. They are labeling all the democratic intellectuals of the land as stupid idiots whose idealism makes them all quixotic, out of their minds because they cannot eat their ideals. They are making a mockery of all the women who supported Cory because the dictator had said, "All women are fit for the bedroom only," during the snap presidential election campaign.

The consequences of that move to make a fake president a hero is to treat all his cohorts who propped him up as heroes also, including those military generals who ordered the shooting of demonstrators, the killing of protesters, etc. The list is endless and it is almost as if 1986 never happened at all.

Flipflopping definitions
Hence, for us to have a decent democratic life, and not a kind of democracy where flipflopping on historical definitions becomes a great pastime, let us strengthen our moral fiber and face all blackmailers together to make them retreat from their posturings as lovers of our country. No they do not love our country but themselves, their plans for rising up the political ladder in this country, to rule and for people to bow down to them. Those are not the leaders that we need in our country.

Let us reflect again and again on what we truly are. We are a people whose spiritual strength is being eroded day in and day out by the kind of occurrences in our country – from a divided south, to environmental degradation of fishkills and landslides, a Church that refuses to see the realities of women’s and couples’ burden of feeding huge families by insisting on its stand against reproductive health and who insist on their forgetting what sex with love means, to an economic system that allows the rich to get richer and the poor get poorer -- that makes the Central Bank a patsy while banks deduct and deduct from and up to the last centavo of the depositors’ savings; a Central Bank that allows pawnshops to rig their charges, as they make pawned renewals a chance to impose service charges again instead of just interests; and so forth and so on. Our financial system is truly a boggling maze of closed and open fists.

Actually, we need nurturing to carry on living so as not to resort to violent means that will render our country a battleground between the haves and the have-nots. We need leaders who have that moral strength to resist the residual effects of a dictatorial rule in this country. We need them to make us remember and not bury our great noble historical memories.

We also need to make our definitions of heroism clearer to the youth so that they would grow up knowing that a hero or heroine is not only someone who would die for the country, but one who knows how to bring the country through a noble path that is corrupt-free and a genuine server of the peoples’ needs.

Lastly, Third World countries like ours could be an easy captive for affluent groups that are out to destroy all the respect for human rights in order to make a profit and gain political power. Hence, let us ask the United Nations to put up a covenant among all nations on how to define heroism and how to honor heroes and heroines. By having a UN covenant, all countries would be on alert against allowing neo-Nazis and pro-dictators to exist, rise up and gain power again.

A lifetime is not really enough to strengthen true democracy as a way of life. Hence the struggle remains and we need to face it squarely and strongly, morally speaking.

TAYO

Inspired by passages from the Bible, I have written a poem which speaks of love between two individuals.
Given the need for political correctness, the poem does not restrict itself to love between a man and a woman, but to all kinds of couples of different sexes.

Now in particular, I would like to make PNoy recite this to his lady love since he might be too busy to write one. So to make his lovelife more interesting, he could read and feel every line of this poem and recite it aloud to his to-be better half, I hope.

By the way, in the Bible, such kinds of poems were made to symbolize love between God and the people. But if you will examine the words, they are too romantic and too human to refer to any ethereal being's feelings.

So, Folks, I give everyone a free rein also to use this poem for any occasion you may deem it worthwhile reciting. Sometimes, a bit of poetry in our social life could give us a new set of spectacles rosy enough to give us hope and bright ideas.

Happy reading. Emma
TAYO

ISANG BULAKLAK
LIGID NG TINIK
HANAP KO’Y LILIM
KUNG SAAN MAHIHIMLAY
HINIHINTAY KITA AKING MAHAL
ALAALA MO’Y MATAMIS
NA UBAS SA AKING LABI

MAGLALAKBAY AKO SA MGA DAGAT
AT HIMPAPAWID
TITIKMAN HALIK MONG PUMAPAILANLANG
KUMOT KO SA TAGLAMIG
PANG-ALIS NG UHAW SA TAG-INIT

HUWAG, HUWAG KANG LALAYO
TAYO’Y PARA SA ISA’T ISA
IKAW ANG HAMOG
AKO ANG BULAKLAK
SA GABI TAYO’Y MAGNINIIG
SA TAMIS NG LAGOK NG PAG-IBIG
NA HINUBOG NG LANGIT

AY, KAY GANDANG MABUHAY
MARINIG LAMANG IYONG TINIG
KAY LAMIG, KAY LAMYOS
BINABANGGIT AKING PANGALAN
KAY SARAP ALALAHANIN
YAKAP MONG PAMPAINIT
SA NAGLALAMIG NA PANAHON

AYOKONG MAGISING,
AYOKONG MAPUKAW
ITULOY ANG AKING PAGDAMA
NG MAINIT MONG MGA HALIK
SA BUONG MAGDAMAG
AT MAALIWALAS NA UMAGA

IKAW, IKAW ANG SAGOT
SA BAWA’T KATANUNGAN
“ANO ANG PAG-IBIG?”

KAMAY MO ANG KUMAKAPIT
SA HUMUHULAGPOS NA TAPAT NA PUSO
HUWAG KANG LALAYO,
IPADAMA MO INIT NG IYONG PAGMAMAHAL

TAYO’Y BABANGONG SABAY
HHIPAN ANG HARDING PUNO NG
MGA ALAALANG PAG-IIBIGAN
PAGTATAMPISAW SA HAMOG AT ULANG
NAGMAMADALING TAYO’Y
MABINYAGANG MAGKASUYO
AAWIT TAYO SA GITNA NG TIKATIK NG ULAN AT
HUNI NG IBONG HANAP AY MASISILUNGAN

IKAW, IKAW LAMANG ANG TUNAY
NA PAG-IBIG
ALIW KO SA ARAW AT GABI
HUWAG LALAYO ANG MGA MATA
MONG NANUNUOT SA KAIBUTURAN
NG AKING PUSO
AKO, AKO ANG IYONG KATUWANG
SA LAHAT NG PANAHONG NAGDARAAN
AT DARATING

TAYO, TAYONG DALAWA
SABAY NA TATAHAK SA LANDAS,
MABATO MAN O MADULAS
PUNO MAN NG ALIKABOK O
MGA TALULOT NG SAMPAGUITA
TAYO’Y HAHAYO, WALANG ALINTANA KUNDI
ANG MAHIGPIT NA KAPIT-KAMAY
TUTUNGO SA LIWANAG NA WALANG HANGGAN

IKAW AT AKO
AKO AT IKAW MAY PAGKAKAISA

INVISIBLE GOD

At Carriedo, the street that runs in perpendicular direction to the Quiapo Church are hordes and hordes of vendors of all kinds of products, from child toys, to peanuts, cigarettes, to stockings, and fruits. If you pass by there, you might not be able to negotiate that very small stretch of a street as it is really full of stalls, on both sides and in the middle. Manila City Hall has found it a very lucrative business to rent out even the middle of the road to the inconvenience of the pedestrians. Is there a way out of this? None. Even the Chinese stall owners are complaining because the vendors have taken over even the selling of similar products to theirs, yet they do not pay any rent at all; whereas the Chinese, aside from paying rent have to deal with garbage and other fees charged to them.

Going beyond the legal aspects of the vendors' occupancy of the streets, we would note that the small Filipino entrepreneurs have after all such perseverance in eking out a living. Thus it is not true that they are lazy and good for nothing and that all they want is a fast buck. I think that what motivates the vendors there is that money is quick no matter how small. They realize right away a profit from every item that they are able to sell.

Despite the industriousness of the people however there are highly unscrupulous big companies that are milking the people in huge millions of pesos. I am talking here of the telcos. A friend has just bought a load of P20 supposed to allow her to text 20 times. But every time she texts me, am with Globe, she loses her load after only three messages.

Now because my celfone has been attacked by a HUMAN VIRUS that blocks my calls or makes it difficult for me to get connected to the numbers I wish to call, I bought a Smart sym card. With a 30 pesos load and 200 free texts as a first timer, I was only able to send 10 texts, and the so-called 20-min voice calls, turned out to be a one-time 3 minute call and kaput. Then I bought a 100 pesos load supposed to give me unlimited call for 4 days. For two days I could not get through. The message was that -- no network service whereas with my globe handyphone I could easily get connected. Multiply this situation by 1 million subscribers and how much do you think is being sucked from the hard-earned kita of our kababayan? By the millions, and that is even daily.

So I was wondering why Manny Pangilinan was going to buy off a basketball team in the US out of the profits he has been making with his businesses, one of which is Smart. Isn't it high time that he plows back all that profit to enhancing the service of his telco? God, this is simply being a Christian -- to do unto others what you want others to do unto you.

Now where is God in our country?

A TIME TO FREE THE MIND

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco


What raises the intelligence of a people? Is it education, media, the church, the family or the government in general? Many think that it is the sole responsibility of schools and universities to increase the knowledge and deepen their understanding of the world, and that the family can only give basic knowledge. On the other hand, some people think that the church knowledge – the Bible is the most important knowledge for the people. Still others think that the government can provide the best environment for the people to become intelligent.

All of these maybe true in one way or another but underlying all these is the need for that freedom to source knowledge. We need to be free to search in the libraries, to go to government archives and records divisions, to search in the SSS, the BIR, the GSIS and other government entities on the operations of companies for us to learn how business functions.

Yet, the very tools needed to source knowledge are laws that should allow us to do that. Without those laws we cannot expect the people to be brave enough, to feel free to search, to broaden their horizons, and to assert themselves to find out who is corrupting who, at what extent, when and where. I remember when I was searching for information on the coconut companies in Southern Tagalog during martial law, I had to be incognito and pretend to be a guide of a beautiful Dutch feminist writer so I could shoot visuals inside them. But sometime later in this millenium, when I tried researching on labor data at the POEA, I was given conflicting reasons and then the employees gave me dated data which I could not rely on to give convincing facts and responsible opinions as to why the labor movement is not as vibrant as it should be. Then I went to NSO to get statistics again but Ms. Ericta, a friend of a relative in the non-martial law days was not there and her staff would not give me their latest data, not even just a year old. I had to leaf through volumes of statistics that were already passé.

Now what is the point of having government records as basic sources of knowledge for writers, researchers and students seeking fresh data for their writings and studies? Without such data, they would be giving only dilettante, arbitrary, opinionated and irrelevant ideas on issues, and thus could dish out results that are no longer important, relevant, current and helpful to forming opinions because the conditions – physical and social would have already changed through the years.

And currency, being relevant are the best labels that writings and studies must have. Without them, then the readers, the public will err in judgment as well and possibly commit mistakes in their actions to better their lives. For example, if a writer provides data that show high salaries of individuals, whereas in reality, the workers are already suffering from low wages, then the image of the labor sector would appear rosy. So what is the need for their struggle to have an increase in pay? Another example, if environmental writers would say that this governor or this mayor has improved the lives of the people in their places, yet omit the data on the real and comprehensive status of the environment in their localities, then the readers would be one-sided in looking at the problem. They would say, “Ahh, let’s imitate the administration of this governor,” without knowing that many of the people in that area have already left the place because their livelihood had been affected by mining companies.

I think that the worst case of withholding of data of writers would be on health. If their sources of data, the hospitals, the city and town hall health centers fail to release data that show how the people’s health is being taken care of – mental, physical, emotional and even spiritual, I must say – then even the legislators who craft laws would be blinded by the writings and say that “We don’t need to raise the budget for health anymore.” Hence instead of raising the quality of life of the people, the governing institutions would put their budgets in other items that most of the time are just physical in nature.

What are we saying here? Idiotization results from that lack of power to source knowledge. An idiotized public results from that lack of freedom to source knowledge. The readers, the Congress and the Senate, the people in general would be and actually are now being shortchanged on how the directions of their lives should proceed.

Everything is being done haphazardly and those with good resources – who could bribe their way in everything with money – are the ones benefiting from the situation. The well-meaning are left with crumbs of knowledge which do not contribute to their being able to reveal truths and corruption about governance and business operations, among other issues.

And worse – what generation of people are we bringing up and what kind of brains – values, knowledge, opinions -- will future generations have? Where will the country go if this lack of freedom to source information is forever suppressed?

I think that there should be no fear in releasing information from all sources if everyone is doing a straight business or engaged in a morally uplifting endeavor.

Only those who are hiding some hanky-panky activities and corrupt officials would be afraid of talking to or sharing information with others – media, writers, students, researchers- about their activities.

I must say that the following data must be accessible to the public – all the knowledge about officials, their relationships – personal and social, their earnings, their held beliefs, and many more. In other words, the lives of officials and employees of government should be open books, not only because the people’s money is being used to pay them and that all their activities are funded by our taxes. The greater reason is that need for them to serve as role models on how to lead a good life.

Hence we have all the right to know the facts so that we would know if, the next time elections are held, they would still be trustworthy enough to earn our votes. If they are employees, then is there a need for us to go to the Ombudsman to charge them with corrupt practices, or any other unethical behavior?

With regard to businesses, I believe that computations of profits especially by the oil companies must be open to the public as well. In this regard, we would know if we need to patronize one over the other or if we should strengthen our research activities on alternative energy sources or not.

Of course it is a nightmare for companies to see the public turning to, not exactly against, them and penetrating their operations. But that is a fact of life and a given once they engage in legitimate business. The people have a right to know who is making so much money, legally and illegally. And given that our people are spiritually-attuned, they would naturally stay away from those companies who just milk and milk them for life without giving back something in return.

For a more focused discussion, let us consider the issue of contractualization. Some heads of companies have gotten recognition, trophies, medals, etcetera not only locally but even worldwide for having managed their companies very well, which means most of the time, for having turned in a huge profitable business.

Actually, before rewarding or awarding them, their hiring and managerial policies should have been examined very well. How long have they been using contractualization? How long should they be allowed to do so? It turns out now that contractualization is a tool for companies to avoid the provision of basic benefits to the employees like vacation and sick leaves, maternity and paternity leaves, and doubling of salaries and wages during holidays among others. In other words it has become a sword to divest the working force of their human rights to lead a decent, humane and just life. Our workers become meek sheep that follow every order for them inside companies, no longer having that supposedly United Nations' backed workers' rights and that freedom to assert their workers' rights. The celebration of May lst becomes a hollow and mechanical occasion to toast the importance of our workers.

My heart skips a beat whenever I meet young women and men working at those businesses with bland looks knowing that after six months they would be forced to leave the company again and search for another job or wait for another one to come their way. Meanwhile, their young bodies are ageing and unhealthy even because of the long hours they spend and majority without overtime pay. Yet they are forced also to put themselves up as presentable -- with make-up and stockings in the case of women, and muscular and quick in responding to orders, in the case of men.

Hence, what are those recognition awards for?

In other words, we are saying here that award bodies must be sensitive to the plight of the constituents of those they are awarding; otherwise, everything becomes a sham, a photo-opportunity to land in the papers which then make ill-repute the awarding system.

And many are indeed deceived by others into pushing such events without their knowing (or are they accomplices to blinding the public eye) that their own reputation becomes questionable and is being harmed by them.

Lastly, the situation raises and abets the existence of corruption. Those who hold the facts needed for information could extract material reward or benefits in exchange for them.

Thus the situation turns for the worse as what should have been a chance to catch corrupt individuals becomes a step to aggravating the crime. What is a time to free the people’s mind, to make them know, becomes a chance to put it in bondage to materialistic instead of spiritual values that could guide them through life. What is unfreeing the mind except a form of idiotization?

Hopefully legislators would already look at the bill on Freedom of Information with greater seriousness and admit that the more we delay its passage then the more we are rearing a country of migrant labourers and professionals who would be using their brains and brawn to serve the needs and citizens of other wealthy countries.

Where now is the truth of "The Filipino is worth dying for?"

Psalm:
"Blessed are they who have regard for the weak; they will be delivered in times of trouble. Their lives will be protected and preserved. Their land will be blessed...."

WHAT CAN MAKE A COUNTRY SAFE?

Every broadcaster in the United States should imagine themselves as some extremist Muslims first whose leader had just been killed by the Navy Seals under orders of the Commander-in-Chief before launching any kind of joke or satire related to the incident.

How would they feel now that their leader is gone? How would they react?

Unfortunately, as I watched two talk shows this morning, I found the jokes of the host rather insensitive to the feelings of the Muslims. Radical or not, all Muslims would feel a tinge of injury over how their own racial brother was being ridiculed.

I am not defending Bin Laden's views at all, nor do I adhere to them. But I think that now is the time for all the peace-loving peoples of the world to feel magnanimous over victory and just keep a serious and quiet mien like their leaders, instead of rabble-rousing.

The jokes were not funny at all and could incite the followers of Bin Laden to further their schemes instead of reflecting on the consequences of their acts before and changing their methods to be recognized in this world.

Maybe the broadcasting, film, radio and print associations, all of media groups must come together and have a united stand on how to behave regarding a very significant and serious happening which could spell a great difference in making their country, and the whole planet a safe place for all of us.

After all, the idea of being on this planet is not to dominate any other race but to make all human beings, human, humane, possessed with all human rights to live peacefully with each other, especially at this time when economic differences are highly distinct.

At this moment, let us pray in unison for all the souls departed and make everyday, a time for reflection on how our acts are helping others cope with problems of existence and being humane.

Let us reflect on this Chinese proverb: "If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world."

So be it.

WHEN A TERRORIST GURU DIES

so osama bin laden has been killed; he who reflected, conceptualized, led and ordered massive groups of young and old men and women to conduct violent activities even in peaceful and innocent venues as his campaign against the United States. what makes an individual turn that violent? what kind of parents did he have. reports could be rife about his background, but still it is difficult to fathom how his mission in life has revolved around sowing fear, sowing terror all around the globe.

why did this century produce a person like osama bin laden? was it his just pure hatred of the United States peoples? her institutions? her democracy? what is it about democracy that he hated?

if osama lived instead of died, what could have happened? i am sure it was difficult for the US forces to have made him lived. Pakistan is not a safe place, not from terrorists. even many women there approve of terrorism. i know one female leader who looked surprised at me when i questioned why she was not campaigning against osama bin laden and yet she could converse on the most highly intellectual ideas about feminism.

hence, the killing of osama could have been justified because his own people could have retaliated right there and then and produced more acts of aggression against any one.

yes, terrorism is a faceless campaign -- as we do not know who is a terrorist in our midst. it could be anyone who is just tired of using democratic procedures in achieving even simple desires and necessities like shelter, food, education, water and many more. is it really exhausting asking for these? why can't they be given on a silver platter for everyone who breathes life? why make it so difficult to live on this planet?

i do not condone terrorism at all. i would not turn terrorist at all. in fact, i would rather die than kill a terrorist. but it is so funny that in our country, the Philippines, some broadcasters would ridicule news about terrorism and treat it as if it were just an ordinary piece among so many pieces that they have mouthe everyday; thus in the end, empowering the terrorists by their cynicism.

and of course, ordinary folks like this restaurateur in Diliman treats terrorism in another comical way. she labels one of her menu foods as "vegetarian terrorist" a pun on the hot chili taste of the veggies.

yes, in our country, terrorism does not connote something dire -- it is an option to many like the armed aggressions of the new people's army. the abu sayyaf, the mnlf and milf. the only ones protesting heavily against their acts are the victims themselves, especially the businesspeople who turn bankrupt from the encounters, kidnapping and "taxation" all the time.

yet if osama had lived to defend himself, we would have seen the phantom of hitler in him -- justifying in all his glory why blood has to be shed, why everyone should be armed, why every suicide bomber is a hero or a heroine, why it was justifiable for him to have ordered the bombing into rubbles of the world trade center. and by his intellect, he could have convinced young minds whose preoccupation now are those computer games of violence as well. and who knows how many more people would get killed later from their imitative acts.

and so, if he had lived, i am sure Obama would be the number one target of his people if he was not released, although by now this is already a given -- going by the ill logic of his campaign. anyone who does not adhere to his mission is considered an enemy meant to be eliminated in this life.

and so, actually, we are back to that era of survival of the fittest, that so-called "caveman's tactics" of killing those who grab his food, who steals his wife, and deprives him of even that simple thing as the roasted tail of an ox, among others.

now how do we really get rid of terroristic mentality? we need to address this question because the killing of that guru of violence does not end there. his gangmates could be plotting more heavy activities designed to draw attention to themselves and their cause.

to my mind, once we are able to demystify terrorism, to show that life on earth is better than that of a fugitive hiding all the time and plotting to destroy institutions, and to kill as many people as possible at one time to grab public attention or just to plainly get even with anyone and everyone in society. it must be a very tall order to answer this right away; but we can start at the most basic step: that of empowering the people.

we need to start in the barangay, that smallest political unit in our country. we need to check who are coming in and going out of the barangay because the gang could easily weave in and out of such a place.

i remember one time going to Quiapo where there loads of CDs and VCDs being sold. one guy with a knapsack passed me by and nearly shoved me down the path. i complained but instead of being apologetic he growled at me with eyes that seem to say, "Don't you know me?" he was a young man, perhaps even in his late teens but his self-assurance was questionable. could he have been hiding a gun in his knapsack? was he there then to have an r and r from his terroristic activities? his response can hardly be labeled normal as the rest of the vendors in the place lowered their eyes when i questioned his uncouth behavior and he had responded in a more uncouth manner.it was as if he was a kind of an institution there -- untouchable no matter if it was his fault.

and there and then i deduced that the people in the area could be cowed readily into submission, obedience and silence once a person holds an arm --whether flaunted about or kept from public view.

so, barangay empowerment is needed -- people empowerment which means knowing the ways the barangay is using the funds for the betterment of their lives, knowing that they are included in the planning on a day-to-day, week-by-week and year-by-year basis.

in our barangay, i was told by our capitana that she would be available every monday, and that very next Monday when we met at the swearing in of the new set of officers of the newly organized Bahay Caridad Housing Association, headed by Bot Alquero. but when i went to her office that monday, she was nowhere to be found, her staff immediately meeting me by the door to tell me that she had just gone. yet i called up before coming and had been told that she was there. when i looked around, i saw her son emerging from the door and their van at the parking lot.

in other words, there is a cordon-sanitaire built around the official who give the go-signal whether one can meet her or not. and this is replicated within the government bureaucracy itself, which then accounts for that inching of any individual into terroristic ideas and acts. why, because, the very people that have been elected, who promised a lot of changes during the campaigns, suddenly become inaccessible and underlings whose ideas of power revolve around being the gatekeepers and not by any whit of humane caring for the constituents now become the new quasi officials that have to be dealt with. this is not democracy but elitism.

yes it is elitism that will kill any aspiration for a democratic life. it is the lack of transparency in government planning, programming and activities that will encourage the seeds of protest, of revolt to grow.

and as we are now in that era of undoing all acts of moral depravity of the past administration, we must put up people centers -- phone and texting numbers, email addresses that make officials easily accessible. we must make all radio and tv stations have slots for the people's views, complaints and ideas about how to make this government function for us.

lastly, i suggest that we change the energy secretary every time a new round of oil price increase arises as it means that he or she is not capable of solving the greatest problem of the people. the department of energy can spell a lot as to what kind of life we can lead, and looking back in our history, all the secretaries become blind when it comes to such increases, and worse, become apologists for the oil cartels' predatory acts.

God save our country from untoward acts from hereon. Amen.

WHEN BALUT BECOMES AN ART OBJECT

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco
What accounts for the significance of an artistic work? Is it the medium, the name of the artist, the content of the art object? The period when the artwork was completed?

It really seems difficult to pinpoint where a significant artwork begins and ends. So many factors could influence its creation and make the viewers appreciate it. But viewing Alwin Reamillo’s exhibit entitled “AngBalutViand” which features real balut and then cast into plaster with emulsion, is a study in high artwork. Reamillo has created an installation that speaks of the history, the cultural taste, as well as the economic state of a people that has seen various evolutions and revolutions in thought, word and deed.

Going through the pieces that he assembled at the Tin-aw Gallery at Makati City, the financial capital of the Philippines, one can find a bit of himself/herself in all of the items. Why because there is something in every piece that seems to exude a trait, a viewpoint, a quality of our race and even a question. Should we continue looking for change, or should we just flow with the historical tide?

An egg reminds us of something that will be born. In fact, we women have eggs that men’s sperms mix with to give life to a foetus or foetuses. In a similar vein, duck eggs are also birthing media. They give birth to ducklings but the process is cut short to produce something either as penoy – all yolk and albumin or balut, an egg with an unborn duckling, now both snackfoods in our country. Thus in this exhibit, a basket of balut reveals eggs cracked open and many more duck eggs hanging and lying here and there with a lot of things to say about Philippine life.

Now why did Reamillo choose a balut to signify the Balikbayan or the Balutviand? Is there a rebirthing process in his idea of the Filipino in another land and in this case Hong Kong where the art installation emanated?

The exhibit features many facets presenting what Reamillo ideates about of the balut. In the middle of the gallery is a table where lie silver saucers with plaster-hardened balut – half – and semi-cracked. From the ceiling hang several balut also and a few small helicopters with carapace bodies that swing in the air as the electric fan blows the air from the floor. Then at the right and left walls of the gallery are many more similar balut.

However, these are not ordinary balut transformations because they contain manyu messages. One egg contains a torn piece of a map of Hong Kong; another minute human male figures in orange and black suits. Other balut pieces contain a black and white drawing of the face of Christ, a clenched fist, the face of a woman saint, and Ninoy Aquino’s face in the 500 peso bill with serial number PS64655. Then in two other balut are, again, minute men in black and orange suits but this time with locks of black hair in disarray in the background.

Meanwhile on the left wall of the gallery are another set of balut – one containing a piece of “alambre” used for fences and reminding us of those used by the military and the police to seal off Malacanang from demonstrators. Another features a picture of a man’s face with eyes closed and drinking from a bottle. Still another, the carapace of the crab with Mao Ze Dong’s face. Such objects reveal a fragile existence manifesting an idea that cannot be sustained. They could also be Reamillo’s comments on a people that continually transforms to another kind of existence in another setting. This must be why his exhibit title Ang BalutViand has a caption “a transcultural balut project by Alwin Reamillo.”

Aside from poking fun at balut eaters, Reamillo also lightens up our view of the anti-Spanish period in Philippine history. In Tatlong Itlog (Los Indios Bravos), he presents a picture of three heroes – Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar the propagandist and Mariano Ponce whose face is superimposed with an “itlog.” Rizal’s hand also has an embedded egg with a small man in black suit and his back turned to the viewer. Why Tatlong Itlog? Probably Reamillo thinks these men possessed ideas which never materialized.

Now, why did he pick this picture among all so many photographs of our heroes? The poses are frozen in time – with Rizal looking at the camera, and del Pilar’s gaze somewhere else. The photo seems to want to make us look back to history but at the same time warns us of the pitfalls of revolutionary ideas, thus showing Reamillo’s half-hearted view of societal change. Why, is it because of its bloody consequences once carried to extreme the way Bonifacio and the Katipunan conducted the revolution? It is not so strange anymore that Bonifacio’s face does not figure at all in this exhibit.

Meanwhile, the image of Rizal is repeated in a “posporo” a Phimco matchbox which is a common need in Philippine home-kitchens. On the other side of the matchbox is a painting of a human heart. Of this juxtaposition of ideas – Rizal and the heart - Reamillo shows his intellectual view of life– that a man who follows Rizal’s fiery heart could induce a change – but then the matchbox is transformed into a “maleta” or a luggage – that property of the Filipino Balikbayan who comes home for a vacation then flies to other lands to seek greener pastures. Thus the matchbox which could ignite change becomes a luggage, a tool for exiling oneself in another land.

Does the artwork show Rizal’s ideas being hatched in foreign lands or do they reflect the Balikbayan’s unending aspiration for Rizal’s love for a free Philippines even when abroad? Truly this artwork can evoke a lot of meanings and it is not for us to give a definitive explanation but rather to bring up many thoughts provoked by this artistic excursion of Reamillo.

At the gallery center wall is tacked “Sirangan,” a four-paneled wood almost two and a half feet high and three feet long shaped like a moth with a body and wings. Sirangan is a pun on Silangan, the East, where the Philippines is located, and is also a potshot at our country’s being labeled, “Perlas ng Silangan.” Embedded on this panel are chicken bones, feathers, a bahay kubo (nipa hut) and a man holding two fishes and whose feet are lifted up by a drawn forefinger of a hand reflecting the delicate situation of the poor folks as that of a moth.

Could this be an extension of Rizal’s story about a moth? Actually, Rizal wrote that children’s story told him by his mother, Teodora Alonzo. A moth gets attracted to the light of the gas lamp. It goes flying in circles nearer and nearer to the light until its wings get singed and it dies.

Over-all the exhibit does not transform us into revolutionaries nor into any kind of advocate. Rather it induces us to be a cynic --- cynical of institutions--- as can be found in one corner of the gallery floor, a 3-piece broken presidential seal with an inscription “Sagisag ng Ulo-pang ng Pilipinas,” an outright denigration of any kind of change emanating from the highest office of the land. However sarcastic this is, we need to know first when Reamillo did this – was it during this time of Pnoy or that of GMA whose administration brought us to the depths of moral degeneration, politically?

Also this exhibit tells us that we need not take life seriously as it could be just a temporary journey without beginning nor ending. Rather life calls us to immerse ourselves in it and to savor the big and small ideas that come our way, whether they involve an overhauling of institutions that deprive the people of a humane existence or just simply a case of enjoying the eating of balut. But be careful, the balut could contain a lot of messages ---consequential and inconsequential too.