Writing in the Age of Transitions

This is the third time I am starting to write this article. The computers I have used continually revert to the desktop. Is it any wonder that in the last months of this administration, it should still continue to harass the critics?

Again, it happened. This is why I sent the above paragraph right away to cyberspace because it seems someone wants to interrupt my writings or forever stop my fingers from creating ideas. Why are these people so afraid of ideas? Have they run out of them?

Again it happened. Folks,it is so difficult for intellectuals to live in this country. I own a Tattoo but in my own home, whenever I use the Tattoo USB to get to the internet, the screen very slowly crawls. I am able to open a website after 5 to 8 minutes. In half an hour,I am able to read only at most three emails. Yet when I go out of the house and go to the Globe office, I am able to access the Internet very easily, except...

One day, I went to the Globe office to test the Tattoo and lo and behold, I was able to read my emails in a breeze, until suddenly it started to slow down and stop altogether. I looked around and saw the guard playing with his celphone. So I requested him to stop it and hedid. I was able to resume my writing afterwards.

Then suddenly my laptop went blank and so I looked around and saw a guy playing with his celfone also. I shifted seats, nearer to the counter and then restarted my laptop. I was able to write my stuff again. But then after about 15 minutes, the screen started hanging and I looked around. A young guy with a baseball cap and usingwith his celfone was marching to and fro to my direction. Whenever he neared me, the laptop would hang and so I requested him to move away and so he did. But he looked at me, not with amazement but with a certain look as if to ask,"Why does she know?"

Folks, I am able to write continuously now because the counter guy in this internet kiosk has disabled this computer from the network, meaning it is standing alone. See? Someone could read my stuff when this was still connected to the rest.

Well, this is the Philippines, and I can't be choosy when it comes to equipment. This is better than writing at home. What do I want to write about?

Actually, I am able to distance myself away from the political scene now and really see my life as a writer vis-a-vis society. Writing here is a lot different from writing in the west. There, the institutions are solidly established and they can't easily crumble due to ideas. But here, the current powers are so insecure that every movement of the critics are tracked down and they are also harassed to prevent them from speaking out or writing.

Well, we learn to do guerrilla writing -- write in the most unlikely places and do it in the quickest way. But I think that in this age of transitions we should not expect an elegant reception of our ideas. We just have to plod on and do our thing rather than rue and rue over this and that kind of harassment. The more important thing is to be able to share our ideas, with our countryfolks and with everyone in the whole world -- how we have been wanting to recover our humanity.