"HOW I GOT MY LUGGAGE" or "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KNOWING THAT BRASSIERES ARE MADE OF SPANDEX"

This is a story about how I got my package as much as it is a story about knowing what brassieres are made of. No, there is no word in what I am about to write that warrants either bowdlerizing or censorship.

On August 12 while still in the Philippines, I sent to Budapest via courier service a box of clothes and shoes with myself as consignee. Two days later, I was to fly to Hungary’s capital to study in Central European University, an international post-grad school established by Mr. George Soros. I thought that since my cabinets back home are bursting with clothes I accumulated through the years (Yes, I still have those caftans and shawls I had more than ten years ago. I never obeyed the rules of fashion so nothing goes passé for me.), it would be impractical if not a social offense to buy sweaters, jackets and suits in Europe. Besides, having traveled to the continent previously, I was already aware that clothes here fetch a fortune compared to Asia. The courier company told me that my unaccompanied luggage would arrive in Budapest three to four days later.

I flew to Hungary. As soon as I arrived at the student hotel, the receptionist handed me some papers faxed by the courier company. It was asking me to submit a copy of my passport, my flight ticket and accomplished value declaration form. Wow, the company's speed impressed me. After two days, I complied.

For more than a week, I waited for my stuff but none came. So I emailed the company asking for update and was told my faxed documents were not received. Deciding to be unstinting in giving the benefit of the doubt, I emailed my documents.

A day later, I got an email from the company’s Custom Clearance Supervisor. It said: “I received your filled form but I need a list of the items in the package. Please send this list with unit values and what kind of matter made of the clothes and shoes.” The message was cloudless enough to me. I mean I understood what she said. But not why. I felt harassed.

I emailed back: “I already submitted the list to your office in the Philippines. In fact, your people were the ones who loaded my things in the box. For the list, just refer to the receipt because everything is there. If you want to open the package, you may. Everything is used clothing and shoes except for the Ponds facial cream. I cannot send a list detailing the materials of which the clothes and shoes are made. As it happens, in my most recent past life, I was a lawyer and a teacher and not an expert on determining kinds of materials used for clothes. I would just say they are all made of cloth. The rubber shoes are made of rubber; the leather shoes are made of leather and the facial cream is made of chemicals.” Well, I also had three pairs of brassieres -the only unused items- in the box but I was a bit bashful to mention them. But I was not shy enough to resist being sarcastic.

I could not also resist saying I "was" a lawyer, even if I come from that part of the world where the justice system has essentially nothing to do with justice. In a continent strong on rights, I thought it would paint the picture that I am legally brawny. Deliberately, I created the impression that a litigation was in the offing. I imagined the customs supervisor's facial muscle twitching a bit and her shoulder muscles going taut upon reading my mail. I must have smirked with self-assurance then.

But the supervisor did not, would not let up! She emailed me again: “We have a list but we don’t know the unit prices because this information isn’t on the list! If you don’t know the material we can make inspection but you should pay warehouse charge about 5100 HuF.”

I went ballistic and shot back: ““Don't you think it is unfair that (your company) did not tell me about your requirements when I shipped? And why should I be made to pay warehouse charge on account of your not telling me something I should have been told?

“What materials do you want me to say my goods are made of? The cream is made of chemicals. The clothes are made of cloth. The sweaters are made of polyester thread. The rubber shoes are made of rubber. The leather shoes are made of leather. And I am pretty sure of this: the brassieres are made of spandex! I am sorry for not mentioning this earlier.”

I was already seeing red. Literally. I had to be scathingly sarcastic and sarcastically scathing.

She emailed me: “ I try to help. If you want to get this package duty free we need your airplane ticket and passport copy.” Hey, I already sent my passport copy and ticket but since she was conciliatory, I answered: “Thank you so much. I will send you the passport copy and ticket tomorrow.” Hah, I did not even know that the requirement to submit a list had to do with taxation. I was not expecting to pay any tax on top of the hefty amount (approx. USD250 for 25 kgs) for courier service I paid.

I did not send my passport copy, neither my ticket because I completely forgot about them. My short-term memory failure is chronic. I realized my lapse only when I was in school. When I was in the computer room taking my computer test -which I flunked as I did not even successfully hurdle stage one- I looked at my mail box. The company sent me a mail saying my luggage was ready for delivery. Later I got a mail that said: "Shipment delivered."

When I got home in the afternoon, my package was waiting for me. Now that my swim suits arrived, I can dip in my hotel’s pool every night. Maybe, I will learn to like pinacolada so I can drink it by the "pool shore" and look chic. I think people get embarrassed when you are all in a bar and they order all these alcohol-laced drinks with names my tongue cannot pronounce (and back there in the Philippines, with names I cannot say but can write, such as Sex on the Beach) while you order tea, or in some cases, milk.

Morale of the story: When you ship unaccompanied luggage, always add brassieres. All the men out there surely have a wife, a girlfriend or both, if not a grandmother. When asked what your shipped goods are made of, just say: “I am pretty sure of this: the brassieres are made of spandex!” It is probably the only right thing you have to say.

(I am posting on the Comments Section some of the reactions that I received on Facebook.)

REP. VICTOR S. DOMINGUEZ: The Man Whose Heart Was Bigger Than His Life

-->(This was written the other year a day before Rep. Dominguez was buried. Today is his second death anniversary.)

The stories were checkered. Some said he died of pneumonia. Others said heart attack. But those who were with him during his final moments say Mountain Province Rep. Victor S. Dominguez succumbed to a broken heart.

Only people who love and love too much would yield to a broken heart. And I know that he had an immense capacity for it.

Since my childhood, I had known him. I spent more than one summer vacation joining his campaign sorties. As his staff for two years in the House of Representatives, I bear witness to his dedication to help people. He took and made time for people- constituents or otherwise- appealing for assistance. He often made me scour telephone directories for the numbers of officials who had the power to appoint or disappoint job-seekers, or grant or deny concessions. Exerting pressure when necessary, he surrendered to no obstacles. His relentlessness was remarkable.

Not a stranger to the discrimination suffered by indigenous peoples, he was resolute to pluck out Igorots from the junction of inconsequentiality to the dais of national prominence. To him, this was achieved by the appointment of Igorots to key government posts. Friends brag and foes concede that his weight-throwing placed Igorots in national major positions. Sundry criticisms may be hurled at the mainstream politics he subscribed to. But if Igorot history will be written, it should devote a page to the trails he blazed for a people who, for years, suffered and still suffer the indignity of being flouted while their resources are being plundered, courtesy of imperial Manila.

When I was 22, he pushed for my appointment --by the President of the Philippines-- as Director of the Cordillera Executive Board. My limited experience- the years I worked for him in the House of Representatives while studying law in a state university- was decorated by good academic credentials (which spelled nothing), and bloated by his influence (which meant everything). He would proudly introduce me as the youngest presidential appointee. If that was an achievement, it was his, not mine. It was my fortune.

He knew how to return favors and never considered them fully repaid. To a fault, he could go to extreme lengths to protect his people- even those guilty of wrongs. Privately, he castigated them for their “sins” but sheltered them from the cage or the whip.

His lingering recollection of favors was a stark contrast to his brief memory for affronts. His heart, as well as his office, was never too crowded for his enemies. One day, a man who publicly campaigned against and vilified him in the past approached him for help on an agency’s budget. I asked, “Why oblige this man?” He replied, “To make your enemy the beneficiary of your goodness is the most gratifying revenge.” That was probably his version of Jesus’ “Throw bread at them who throw stones at you.”

His Quezon City home was perpetually open to everyone in need of help, shelter and food. There was a constant stream of guests, some from the neighboring provinces of Mt. Province. On weekends, his Baguio home was teeming with people shackled by motley problems requiring his service or power trident. Not once did I hear him and his family complain although their privacy was a casualty. Openhandedness was truly his trademark. Probably on this score, no politician will ever match him. 

I agonized when we had a publicized rift. I denounced him for standing up for his relative against my relative. He broke my heart. I must have broken his heart too, because he wrote to say that as my second father, he was hurt by my action but understood me. Alas, things were said and done.

The crevasse ran so deep –it had to for people who were close- I thought it would remain gaping. Fortunately, time, indeed, does heal wounds. My eternal regret is that things were never the same. When soreness vanished, I already had a very large world plus a million and one concerns that I rarely socialized. Also, there was the ideological divide. While working in the executive branch, my ideological metamorphosis was completed irreversibly. I abhorred and still abhor the anti-people national status quo. Rep. Dominguez–wittingly or unwittingly- was a status quo pillar. (Consider how he helped save Gloria Arroyo from impeachment!) Differences in our political views notwithstanding, it was always in my “in-the-future” agenda to pay him a personal visit and savor the old days. With his untimely departure, I forfeited that chance. Missed opportunities will haunt me. But forever, I will be grateful for the privilege of knowing this man who was exceptional amidst his flaws and weaknesses.

Rep. Dominguez had a mischievous side, too. With an impish grin, he voiced out one time that he wished I would romantically “fancy” his very nice, good-looking relative, certainly every girl’s ideal pick. But the relative was not interested in me. Besides, I was eighteen or nineteen and my world was too narrow to accommodate boys. My surprise and embarrassment must have been evident. He simply chuckled and did not wait for a reply that would never come.

There were persistent talks that he died hankering for the affection of kith and kin who politically forsook him. His vital signs were good. But he seemed to have slackened his grasp on his willpower to live.

Jesus’ death on the cross shakes us to the core because of a friend’s betrayal. If Judas were one of the Pharisees, or the Roman soldiers, or the unbelieving crowd, betrayal would have been negated, altering the twist in the story of salvation. Foes cannot betray you as they cannot perforate your heart, although they may arouse your temper. Rep Dominguez must have loved his relatives so much to be ineffably upset by their rejection.

In life, he did not draw comfort from moving around with anger weighing him down. While a shattered heart enervated him during his last days, I believe he began his journey to the afterlife sans a decelerating baggage of hate. During his final hours, he must have been like the father weakened by unquenched thirst for the homecoming of his prodigal son, absolved before absolution was sought, loved beyond he deserved. Thankfully for the prodigal son, he ironed out emotional kinks and embraced the old man again before it was too late; otherwise guilt would have plagued him for the rest of his life.

I looked at Rep. Dominguez’ shrunken body in a brass coffin. So shrived of animation. A light has gone out. I surveyed the thousands who came to pay their last respects to a man whose kindness and generosity humbled also those who rebuff his brand of politics. Many wept unabashedly. He was so very alive. The torch of his good deeds will endure.

His hurts are behind him now. We who still breathe are left to confront our regrets for things undone and unfinished conversations, our guilt for knowingly or unknowingly hurting him beyond his endurance and neglecting to ask for forgiveness, our sorrow for a loss we did not quite prepare ourselves for. In a way, we are dead ourselves. We must struggle to rise from our own graves, dug by our regrets, our guilt, our sorrow.

Au revoir, Uncle Vic. Long you will live.

WHY I HIBERNATED

Having been out of circulation for what seems to be a vast stretch of time, I do not quite know how to begin this piece. People speculated on what happened to me. Someone asked me if there is truth to the rumor that I have cancer.

Honored, for lack of a better word, is how I feel over the fact that there were people who visited this blogsite in spite of my prolonged absence. It is not fair on my part to have stopped visiting it and to have failed to read and respond to comments. My apologies.

So what happened to me? Healthwise, I haven't been as well as I used to. Maybe, the stress took its toll on me. It came to a point that I had bouts of loneliness. Advised not to read a lot of heavy stuff, I took a vacation from blogging.

Fibromyalgia is the culprit that withdrew me from circulation. In layman's parlance, it is chronic muscle pain. My whole body aches on occasion. The cause is unknown but stress can aggravate it. Thank God it is not fatal. So far the known deaths associated with it are suicides. I am not among the brave ones who have the compunction to end their lives with their hands. My earthly pain is peanuts compared to damnation. While I was on vacation (from blogging, among others), I have been attending to my health concerns.

My ailment is not curable but I am hacking it. I religiously take medicines and have therapies. The old me thrived on pressure and work. I abused my mind and body. Now, while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. These days, I am a part-time lawyer. Teaching is in my blood so I cannot give it up. As I always say, if I will not be paid to teach, I will pay to teach. Thankfully, I am getting paid. It's like playing --- for a fee!

I am back to blogosphere but I cannot say for how long. How does one resume blogging after having been away for so long? Perhaps, sharing with you a poem I wrote while in pain will be a good start. Please keep visiting.

Waiting for Death

The
pain
slowly
arrives
with shallow savagery
Then deeply plunges jagged claymore to my knee

How long must I endure unforgiving needles?
In dreams obscured shadows pass me by like riddles
Methinks they are angels of death spying on me
Perhaps curious to know if I am fighting or ready
Sometimes, pain pilfers reason from the open wound
Plants bleakness that within surrender is cocooned
Like secrets buried deep under some unmarked tree
Their solitude the salvation that sets them free
Frantic with flagging nerves, I wait for peace alone
Willing release from pain poking at every bone

When my tears are settled and hardened on the floor
Suppliant, I sit for Death
to rip
open
the
wide
door.

JOHN DENVER: IN MEMORIAM Part II

I am currently somewhere in Europe partly for business and partly for pleasure. I do not know if I will always be enthusiastic to go to an internet shop while there are sights to behold and places to explore. Envy me. At least I am taking a respite from having to know about the wrong turns being taken by The Queen and her ilk, and the massive corruption further burying the Filipino nation into the muck and putting the Philippines on the brink of political collapse. (But the truth is I just have to know. Everytime I have access to the internet, I find out the latest happenings in The Queendom. Chismosa talaga.)

She was reportedly distressed over all the briberies. So upset she was that she ordered an investigation to get to the truth. Talaga? She is upset over the briberies or she is upset that her bright boys and girls did not do a clean job? Nabisto tuloy. The investigation must be for the purpose of identifying those whose head must be axed from her holy inner circle. Imagine bribing Crispin Beltran and Ed Panlilio? There is an Ilocano word for those who had the stupidity to offer money to Beltran and Panlilio: Tabbed!

Anyway, since I am supposed to be on vacation, let me do a Part II of a topic that brings me nothing but a light feeling: John Denver. Let me share you my poem in his remembrance.

For John Denver (In Memoriam)
by Cheryl Daytec

The sweet voice that spoke for them without tongue
The courage released where there was almost none
The saber that could pierce apathy and ire
The shield from a rain of bullets gone haywire
The unguent that calmed weeping broken hearts
The refuge of them whose sapped life lost all art
A candle illuminating in the dark
Jasmine strewing fragrance in a stinking park

You asked, What are we making those weapons for?
So much money to waste! Why not feed the poor?
Why do we exile the feeble refugees
When our gluttony forced them on bended knees?
Why do we have three worlds- first, second and third?
Let's tear down the curtain,for there's just one world
Women everywhere must have bread and roses
Wind down their toil from years of powerlessness

A small garden snail is a creature to defend
What more human infants unable to fend
For their own survival? Pity them sans power
Life is so sacred, protect it no matter
The cabbage and tomatoes complete life's circle
Honor their significance; respect their innate worth
Creation's a gift; every death must give life
Death that spells more death gives birth to more strife

I listened to you, a child I may have been
I had been repeating your questions since then
You made me imagine a night in the forest
Afterwards, I nurse no dread of snakes and beasts
As I have of men whose hands pull power's trigger
Whose callousness push the world into danger
So what is wealth when it renders others poor
What is an open gate when there is one closed door?

Your songs are in my soul, they are in my bone
You showed how a flower could shatter a stone
Your music is part of what I have become
Searching for fairness in places where's none
Your sweet voice summons, and not just the ear
It nudges the conscience to submit to fear
Of virtues such as love, virtues such as justice
Oh, these we must serve; oh, these we must please

I look for the rhyme and reason in your death
There's none I can see; but I still feel your breath
You had so much to share, and your all you did give
No grave lies in your name; and long you will live!

I wrote the poem while listening to John Denver one day in September. I sent it to my siblings, all John Denver admirers. My sister Betty (not just an admirer but a possessed fan) emailed to say the poem should reach people and John Denver's family. I posted it on Bread for the World. Carlos Navarro of the Bread for the World Movement said that he passed the poem on to Hank Bruce, author of the book Peace Beyond All Fear: A Tribute to John Denver's Vision. Bruce's wife Tomi Jill Folk said to me in Carlos Navarro's blog: "My husband Hank Bruce and I will be meeting John Denver's mother Erma and first wife Annie Denver at the Windstar Foundation gathering Sunday, Oct.14th, and will bring them each a copy of your poem, so it will indeed reach his family. We will be presenting them with Hank's book "Peace Beyond All Fear, a Tribute to John Denver's Vision." Two thousand people from all over the world are expected to be meeting in Aspen, (Colorado) to honor the memory of John Denver; your poem will tell his family that his influence extends to those not able to be present at the event."

I was floored. I told Betty. She was more floored.

I just thought you should know.

I'll be back in November.

JOHN DENVER: IN MEMORIAM

He was a musician. He was a poet. He was a philosopher. More than all this, he was an activist.

What a shame that he died too soon.

On 12 October 1997, John Denver (born Henry John Deutschendorf) died when the private plane he was piloting crashed. The details of his death can be found here.

He is best remembered by the world for that very beautiful love song "Annie's Song." In the Cordillera, he is renowned for the song Take Me Home, Country Roads which was unofficially adopted as the Cordillera anthem.

But not everyone is aware that like Jackson Browne, John Denver was an activist who used his music to question inequality and injustice everywhere. As a young child raised in Sunday school, I was passionate about justice and equality. This was the 1980's. We had John Denver cassette tapes and I would listen to them over and over again. The virtues I learned to appreciate in Sunday school I appreciated all the more.

When I was in college, my generation was going gaga over Madonna and the orange-haired Cindy Lauper, and dancing to the ear-piercing sounds generated by weird looking people who called their noise metallic rock and roll. It could not relate to my music choice, and neither could I to its (although for a time in the 1990's, I was crying to Toto's I'll Be Over You after my first love slipped away. I also became deeply interested in Depeche Mode's Somebody because my then ka-relasyon who is now my husband swore he could have written that song for me).

Even among Filipino activists, Denver is not widely appreciated and I guess it stems from their not knowing how profound his music is. It seems not to have commercial appeal. In the 90's ear-damaging noise was selling and Denver was creating soft music although his songs created noise of their own because they expressed the concerns of the common people. I think Denver knew this. To his eternal credit and my eternal happiness, he did not succumb to the temptation of wealth. He did not let the market change his music. I think he was hoping he could change the market.

In the song One World, he laments global socio-economic stratification. He asks, "Why are you calling this the third world? I only know that it is my world. I hope someday it can be our world. Can you imagine one world, one world? This world is made for everybody. This life is gift for everyone. This earth is bound to keep on turning. This day is flowers in the sunshine, sunshine." In Let Us Begin, his castigation of US military interventionism and the Reagan administration's military spending policy is unequivocal: "What are we making weapons for? Why keep on feeding the war machine? We take it right out of the mouths of our babies, take it away from the hands of the poor. Tell me, what are we making weapons for?"

He invites the world's attention to the case of the homeless in Falling Leaves. "This is for the refugees/ The ones without a home/ A boat out on the ocean/ A city street alone/Are they not some dear mother's child?/ Are they not you and I/ Are we the ones to bear this shame? And they this sacrifice?/ Or are they just like falling leaves/ Who give themselves away/ From dust to dust, from seed to shear? And to another day?? If i could have one wish on earth? Of all i can conceive/ T'would be to see another spring/ And bless the falling leaves."

In It's A Possibility, the tenor-voiced John Denver exhorts the world to unite to end hunger and injustice. He says, "For all the times that you've wondered why/ The world turned out this way/ And all of the times that you've asked yourself/ About the games that people play/ About the politics of hunger/ And the politics of need/ How the politics of power/ Seem to be the politics of greed." He speaks for the defenseless children and poignantly articulates their dreams in I Want to Live.

He also popularized the song Bread and Roses written in 1912 by James Oppenheim as a tribute to the Suffragette Movement. Here are some lines from that song which moves me to tears everytime I hear it: "As we go marching, marching/ We battle too for men/ For they are women's children/ And we mother them again/ Our lives shall not be sweetened/ From birth until life closes/ Hearts starve as well as bodies/ Give us bread, but give us roses/ As we go marching, marching/ We bring the greater days/ For the rising of the women/ Means the rising of the race/ No more the drudge and idler/ Ten that toil where one reposes/ But the sharing of lifes glories/ Bread and roses, bread and roses." Tell me, isn't this beautiful?

And John Denver brought to life Ed McCurdy's The Strangest Dream during a massive rally denouncing the US-instigated Vietnam War. With fire in his soul, John Denver sang: "Last night I had the strangest dream/ I'd ever dreamed before/ I dreamed the world had all agreed/ To put an end to war." I think this song should be revived especially with a brewing US-Iran War and the ongoing US-led war in Iraq wreaking horror of all sizes, shapes and nationalities.

I could go on and on about John Denver's politics. As I said in the blog Bread for the World, "Many modern day intellectuals wrote books on ideology and theories that they developed and, for their works, are now extolled by the world as philosophers. John Denver wrote and sang songs that make him no less a philosopher. The whole world will one day realize this."

I never met John Denver. But we could actually have. The virtues he kept searching are the same ones I pine for. His music heavily influenced my life. This world is still as turbulent as he left it. Poverty is massive. Imperialism is still the norm for the First World. But there are people who, because of John Denver's music, are standing firm in the name of the peace, justice, love and equality to which he dedicated his career. This gives us hope that all is not lost. His life was short. But his influence outlives him.

Rest in peace, John Denver. Death insulates you from the politics and injustice that made you unhappy.

- cheryl daytec/ 12October07

REMEMBERING HAYDEE B. YORAC

Yesterday was the death anniversary of one of the most distinguished persons the Philippines ever produced: Haydee Bofill Yorac.

Shortly before her death, she was a Commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government tasked to recover the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. Under her watch, the PCGG had several accomplishments to justify its existence. She left that body on account of illness but the nation believed that she was pressured into resigning by an administration dancing beautiful tango with the Marcoses.

Yorac was also a COMELEC Commissioner. In 1986, when Marcos was pressuring the COMELEC to rig election results, she led a walk out. It is heartening to know that the COMELEC, after all, had its moments of glory. Now the body has gone to the most stinking gutter after the Hello, Garcinungaling scandal and COMELEC Chair Abalos' involvement in the highly anomalous ZTE deal with the Philippine government.

A human rights lawyer, Yorac was courageous and outspoken. She opposed the Marcos' dictatorship and was jailed for it. Above all, she was like Caesar’s wife: beyond reproach. In 2004, she was a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service. Accepting the award, she said: "Our values and personal convictions dictate the direction that we take and the stand that we make on moral issues that affect our work, in particular, and the country, in general. The desire to make government more effective and efficient in its mandate of good governance is of paramount importance. It is the driving force that compels many of us to accept responsibilities in government, despite the odds."

As A UP Law Professor, she was known for putting presidential daughter Imee Marcos in the latter’s rightful place: a mere student. It is said that she prevented Imee’s bodyguards from entering her class.

I am honored to have been a student of the Great One. She was my professor in Obligations and Contracts, a five unit-killer law subject. In the University of the Philippines, professors required students in civil law subjects to use commentaries by Arturo Tolentino which frizzy-haired Yorac called “the best of the bad law books.” Paras was banned. Yorac went as far as saying that anyone caught using Paras would be booted out of the classroom. Paras books started to be rejected by my mental process. I could not understand them. When I started to teach civil law subjects, I forbade my students from using Paras.

She would say, “That is a flash of brilliance!” when a particular discussion of Tolentino was superb.

In her class, we were like a cat on a hot tin roof. The Great One administered one-on-one oral examinations, with you standing in front of her for some twenty minutes. She would grill you and her facial expression or the absence of it would be no help. We feared her, until the fear metamorphosed into reverence. I was never the studious type. After all, our UP Law Professors were mostly “finalists” who based the grades on the final examination. I would burn the candle before the final examinations. Literally, too at one time when the Republic of Diliman was plunged in darkness by a super typhoon that uprooted a big tree in front of our dorm. But I read for the Great One’s subject. Every night. At times, I would read even while at work in Congress. The objective was not a high grade, it was to do the Great One’s efforts justice. It paid off: At the end of the semester I was one of the top two in her class, the other one being Tina Benipayo who would eventually graduate valedictorian.

One time, we discussed a case about a naïve young woman who was promised marriage by a much older man. Apparently, the man had been visiting the home of the girl. On the pretext of teaching the girl how to pray the rosary, he convinced her parents to let her go with him. They slept together and she got pregnant.

Eric, a philosophy instructor in Diliman, raised his hand and asked, “How did the girl get pregnant if they only slept together?” Yorac’s eyes enlarged, and then with a face that would not betray her amusement, she blurted: Mr. ___, sleeping together means not sleeping at all.” We had a good laugh. Her facial expression remained stoic. She never laughed at her own jokes. At one time, a student could not answer her question. Edgy, he just kept staring at her. As if taunting him, Yorac kept staring back. Then the unmarried Great One said after what seemed like an eternity, “Mr. ___, let’s stop staring at each other. We might fall in love.” The giggle that the class had been stifling was let loose like a powerful waterfall. I remember how the big-bodied Mel Velasco roared in laughter.

The Great One is in the Great Beyond. In these times when corruption is at its highest and vilest, when it seems to be the norm in government, we miss her terribly. We search for Haydee Yoracs. And we are disappointed that no one in the top level comes close. Most of them dirtied their hands. Most of them are following the leader of the pack.

Haydee Yorac will always be my idol. She will live long after she died.

Mother Teresa's Darkness and Light

The world is still trying to recover from shock, disillusionment , even devastation. Mother Teresa, world renowned figure, Nobel Peace Prize awardee, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, and yes, the Living Saint when she was still alive, spent decades in spiritual emptiness!

This is revealed in her letters compiled in the book “Come Be My Light” edited and published by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, one of her spiritual advisers. He is also the nun’s postulator. (For the enlightenment of non-Catholics like me, a postulator is the principal petitioner for the canonization or recognition as saint of a Roman Catholic Church faithful.)

In one letter, the revered Mother Teresa said “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me – of God not being God – of God not existing.” In another, she said, "If there be no God - there can be no soul. If there is no soul then Jesus - You also are not true. Heaven, what emptiness."

Mother Teresa’s journey to doubt must have begun in the late 1940’s when, then a cloistered nun teacher, she asked to be released by the Loreto sisters to set up the Missionaries of Charity. To do that, she had to struggle with her vow of obedience. With other nuns, she lived among the poor in Calcutta’s slums where she faced and battled against the curse of hunger, pain and desolation. Shortly after living among the poor, the demons of doubt started to torment her.

It is easy for me to understand her.

There was a time when in one day, I learned from the papers that an American woman drowned her babies to death, a man was hailed to the police station for raping his daughter who was his sex slave for year, and a typhoon left hundreds dead. And I wrote a poem that ended with the lines: “Did God flee from this world? Or did He go on a long vacation?” I will not print the poem here because it is so angry. My Mom whose faith in God is so deep will be saddened and, knowing her, she will worry over my spiritual health. She has enough worries over my physical health already.

I have not even seen one-third of the horrors Mother Teresa witnessed. Her smile, she said in one letter, was often a mask. The ironic thing is that while she was being tortured by doubts, people’s faith in God was drawing nourishment from her unparalleled work to alleviate the misery of Calcutta’s scourged. Other people preach the Gospel and talk about the existence of God; she opted to make her life colossally significant for others and by doing so, affirmed the presence of a Being higher than us. And yet in some of her letters, she referred to God as the Absent One. There she was- giving light to those whose lives were submerged in utter darkness. But within herself, she was wandering in spiritual limbo. In one letter, she said, “If ever I become a saint, I will surely be one of “darkness." That’s coming from the person who was a beacon of hope in a world of hopelessness.

None of us is competent to stand as judge of Mother Teresa’s spiritual salvation. That is for God to decide. But we can say that her life was the torch that kept the world from totally stumbling in its own darkness, the darkness forces within it created, the darkness from which we wrestle to be free.

What the The Authorities Say About This Blog

I just arrived from Gonogon, Bontoc, Mt. Province. I opened my mail and was excited to share to everyone the good news that for the first time in 20plussomemore years, I drank water straight from the tap in the Philippines without experiencing any form of stomach upset. This says a lot about how the people of Gonogon treat Mother Nature. We will have to put off the discussion because I discovered something else in my mail.

There was a stream of good wishes and nice words about SRT. (By the way, my daughter Karminn Cheryl Dinney, a young poet, is in charge of the design. I just input.). Melchora Chin of Australia is encouraging me to publish a poetry book and she said she would be happy to buy one. I planned this more than 10 years ago but I was so busy working, earning my masters, and learning the ropes of motherhood and marriage. All I could do then was have my works individually published by some papers. Last year my friend Atty Manja Bayang and I were talking about collaborating. Maybe, times are better now.

Atty. Harrison Paltongan, a bar topnotcher, future Supreme Court Justice and poet-in-the-closet, said in his email:

Chyt, you are indeed gifted and you articulate your excellent talent in a classy way though mostly in a poignant and somber tone. I admire your unrelenting crusade in favor of the less-privileged and even in poetry, you are their champion. Regards to Leandro. His honorable shortcoming in the election count is nothing compared to his having you. Though it may be tougher to be the hubby of one like you than to be Mayor of the City...haha.

Harry has been listening to all those election loose talks. Hahahaha. Bad ear, Harry. Thanks, anyway. Please contribute your poems on the greens and the breeze. Then SRT would not be so somber.

Bill Bilig, an Igorot blogger whose From the Boondocks is larger than life, emailed to say he thinks my poems are great. From the Boondocks is in SRT's list of recommended blogs and website. It is the most popular blog of an Igorot. Bill was the source of my inspiration to finally create SRT. I discovered his blog when Ferricardia of Bibaknets, the largest dap-ay in cyberspace shared Bill's post on a peeing Igorot statue in front of Baguio's Hotpot/Barrio Fiesta Restaurant. It was Bill's expose that inspired the revolution which culminated in the removal of that offensive statue. Anyway, I became a regular visitor of Bill’s blog, a library of social and political concerns. He told me in so many words to create my own. SRT is the result. It was actually an “attempted blog” from October 2006 until it became a consummated one a few days ago.

Bill also posted a generous review of SRT in From the Boondocks. I am humbled by it. Indulge me by allowing me to reproduce it here.

02June2007
Yay!AnotherIgorotBlogger


You got to love Smorgasbord of Random Thoughts. It is the blog of Cheryl Daytec Yangot who, if you remember, caught our attention way back at the time when we were just making our first steps in the blogosphere (being encouraged by more established bloggers like Miskina Ano Naisip which I thought was a blog on tennis player Anastasia Myskina, Kayni's Meanderings, and Gandang Igorota). Anyway, as we were saying, Cheryl caught our (and certainly the nation's) attention because of her crucial role in exposing the board exam nursing scandal which you can read in our post here.

It's good that Cheryl now has a blog because we are sure she will be adding valuable insights to our corner of the blogosphere. As we've said in the past, the more Igorot/iCordillera bloggers there are, the better it will be for us in terms of increasing our visibility as a people, in correcting the negative stereotypes held by most people about us, in articulating the many concerns that we face, at marami pang ibang bentahe.

Smorgasbord is, for the most part, a poetry blog so Cheryl joins the ranks of Jocelyn Noe and L. Angeleo Padua who publish their poems online for us to read. Yay!

I haven't read all of Cheryl's poems yet but I really like the ones I've read so far like Love Has a Hand and Invisible II. Here's a paragraph from Invisible II so you won't think that I'm just raving for nothing:

We were invisible. They did not see us
when they came with their bulldozers
and made plains of our mountains, our
home and refuge for millions of years
In the sacrosanct name of development,
they erected chateaus for the bourgeois
We looked at our home--
It
was
gone.

If that is not an excellent poem, I don't know what is. Cheryl's poems actually reminds me of the prose of Inquirer columnist Conrad de Quiros. I love reading Conrado's column because it is always beautifully written. I have to admit though that I sometimes avoid said column because it usually makes me sad and mad.

Yup, de Quiros makes me sad and mad (not at him of course) because he has a knack for capturing our tragedy as a nation and our failures as a people and I sometimes don't want to be reminded of these. But even if I actively try to not read de Quiros, his writing is just too good to miss so I do always end up reading him. And really we can't run away from the tragic truth, which he often writes about, can we?

So Cheryl's poems have this "Quiroesque" quality to them: they can be depressing because they speak the truth but they are too good to miss. So if you are in the mood for reading excellent poems about Igorots then visit Cheryl's blog here. You might get sad a little bit as I was when I was reading them but the poems are good food for the mind and soul.

Uy, what more shall I say? Accolades are embarrassing and at the same time humbling. I take them as reminders never to stray from the path and to keep striving to live a life of meaningful existence. Matagotago tako amin!