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Many stories are being told about climbing a mountain; this one's about faith. |
![Merit Badge in Appreciation
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For your patience during the delay of juding for [Link To Item #1102921] . Thank you!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Appreciation-1985.gif) A question often crosses my mind – how do I want to be remembered? I have so many thoughts on this because, simply, it always crosses my mind. But, you know, I try to treat this as imaginations. I will never know. You will never know – that we are being remembered. Do our heroes know that they're being adored and honored? Rick Warren said, “You were not put here to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.” Nevertheless, the image of my papa always comes across. He was a simple man with nothing – but everything – to give. “Just be happy.” Despite the scarcity of things and opportunity, he was happy. And he was misunderstood - by me, my siblings and mama. When I was nine or ten years old, old enough to remember those memorable days, he brought me to the center of a mining village. The mine was to us a real blessing, to my boyish mind, it was a gift from heaven above. Dusty road and yellow water, and an English speaking (American) manager, the environment is still inside here. I was proud to hear my papa converse with him. We rode in a truck used to transport lumber to our town. It was my first long trip as a child, and I saw the mountain, the rigorous terrain, and the beauty of God’s creation with the backdrop of a yellow water. My eldest brother was one of the laborers. At salary time, he’d present to mama his pay slip, a summary of earnings and deductions. “Well, my son, better luck next time,” she said with a kiss on his forehead as she stared the contents of the slip. Maybe a few pesos to buy a ganta of rice. The innocence of the place could be pictured in my face. “What are we doing here, Papa?” He couldn’t give me a clear answer. He simply muttered things like he was applying for a job because he was suspended as policeman of our town. The American manager was too kind to accept us, not kind enough to give us a job. And so we walked from that place back to the nearest town, some twenty to twenty five kilometers, maybe more. We trailed a vast wooded area, rivers, up and down, long and winding. An exhaustive, long trek for a ten-year old kid like me. When we reached the first house in town, we asked for food and water. I felt how it was like to be a beggar. Mama kept on nagging: study, study, my child, so you can’t inhale the mountain and the color yellow. And now I know why I have to study and strive like what she said. Life is a very difficult subject, more difficult than the trigonometric principles in college. Now I know why the earth moves and revolves like a spinning ball. It’s because life also revolves and spins. Sometimes you are poor, sometimes rich. I was called Amerkano because as a young boy, I had those features, genes I inherited from my grandfather who lived in the island, and later left for his good, native land after espousing one of the natives. He left a part of his gene to become a writer like me who struggles to coin words everyday. Now I know why I speak good English. A brood of five and all boys was mama’s ticket to heaven; she had her purgatory on earth (to be aggravated by my papa’s drinking). Sometimes, she would just scream in the middle of a peaceful morn. The five brothers didn’t really have peace in the kitchen. My vivid memories are focused on the rainy days of my childhood, so full of nature. How happy we would have been if those drops of rain were real manna of the Jews, because the five brothers always longed for them. I feel nostalgic when rainy days are here, or drizzles outside the windows come at times. During those wet days, we used banana leaves as umbrellas. And tin cans protected us from pouring rain that flowed like water falls on the holes of our nipa roofs. The cans were hung on the ceilings to catch the water when the rotten nipa leaves could not anymore protect us from the pouring rain. High school was full of action, hungry stomach and memorizations. A teacher forced us to memorize history notes, word for word, including periods, commas and question marks. No wonder, she too could do it even with colons and semi-colons. I could memorize long sentences and stanzas of American and Filipino literature. We did it under the shades of coconut and guava trees, reciting facets of world history, word for word, facing the woods at the back of the school. The hollow-blocked fence separating the school and the wilderness looked like a long bridge adorned with young, ambitious "memorizers". College? Less thrilling than high school. I copied one whole article from a magazine and had it published in the school organ, with my big by-line. From that time on, I became the writer and future attorney. After college, I joined an army purportedly to serve my country, but which later turned out for goons and gold. I took with me some wealth I wanted for a lifelong adventure, forgot everything that was left behind. Slowly, my foundation deteriorated, eaten by rats and mice I kept in my subconscious. All the enigma, excitement and endless dreams and ambitions suddenly, to my mind, became positive. Now here in this world of my own – I can call my own – away from the land of poverty I started to build my dream world. A real one. A fantastic recreation of my childhood dreams full of adventures and escapades. How did these all happen? It was just like a dream. The earth, seen from above, is a beautiful stone, a mighty rock, thrown by a powerful hand from an ocean of nothingness. It will be there forever. But to be destroyed slowly, and slowly by you and me. Haven't you imagined yourself a spirit? You can regard yourself as a spirit floating over the universe, watching at the earth, slowly and slowly deteriorating, until it collapses into nothingness. Like a mountain with mines. Like a river with chemicals. Like the air that you breath. Slowly they will go back to the mouth of God. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF GOD SPITS THEM ALL, MAKE ANOTHER BLACK HOLE FULL OF EVIL SPIRITS? CAN YOU IMAGINE? ASK YOURSELF!!! (This is the introduction - somewhat - to a book about me, of course, and it's like a summary, don't you think? Our life is like an island, there are rivers and seas and mountains, and mines. It has a beginning and an end, and the end seems to be the beginning of another. Don't you think?) |
| It's time that I have to forgo, to let go of what has been inside, troubling, seemingly killing my urges, these are fantasies and dreams, to know what is really going on. Can't figure it. A thousand, a million, countless, they are emotions, feelings, ideas. There was a time I could write. It's so hard, so difficult now. Something is holding up. As you can see, it's been a long time since I last updated this blog of mine. Now I'm trying to counter, to fight, to really let go. But there's a lot of things to do, or things to be done. Procrastinations, lazy writing. And dollars. I have my choices. Which one? Something that can make richer in my mind and spirit, and body. |
| Fear! This is not fear of the unknown. But fear of what is inside. Fear that has been here wanting to conquer me. Trying to outsmart it, because it looks like a foreign entity maneuvering down to the very last bone. Now it's preventing me from moving on, from realizing my tremendous potential. Truly mysterious. But if I am able to get hold of it, strangle it, and throw it to the dogs, this whole self can become great. It's the only one preventing my movement, my successes, and it's cause much pleasure. Fear. or fear. |
| Without looking back at my past blogs on this website, I think this is my second time writing about freedom. Freedom is a sweet topic, a word I love to glance at my imagination or memory inside. Freedom deals with many connotations, or it bears some hidden meanings. The word alone is rich in history, it can be linked to art, ideology, and most of all my writing, our writing. Freedom is power. In writing alone, I like to think of freedom as the power to create many things, like stories, and characters, scenes, plots and subplots in stories, art in writing. Freedom can be observed and enjoyed almost absolutely in writing. Writers write a lot about freedom, or they write not on the subject but they are the most who enjoy it. Freedom suppressed destroys many things, on the ordinary human being, but mostly on writers. I have enjoyed a lot of my freedom ever since I started putting words on a piece of paper, or typing on the computer. If only all people know the benefits of writing even on just a crumpled piece of paper, and on a lap top, many will know and enjoy freedom. |
| December the 24th! How time flies! Yesterday you were young, full of vigor, and you thought Christmas comes after so many jobs, and sacrifices. This time you can be rested from your job, and now some gifts are coming. But how Christmas has become so materialistic! There are those who say they can't have Christmas because there'll be nothing in their tables on "Noche Buena", i.e., midnight dinner on Christmas eve. For the rich in my country, they have everything, in fact, more than enough for Christmas. While the poor are extremely poor, for they have nothing to eat, the rich have much, much more. This is Christmas, Philippine style. |
| Childhood impressions are quite lasting, and I think we all believe that. Once you experience something, or you meet an event, a thing, a person, for the first time in your life, that will never be gone on you. It's an imprint that can never erased from your memory bank, until you die, until eternity. An impression on me involves a personality. He could not be erased from my mind because of his accomplishments when we were then in high school. To my impression, he was a perfect creation, if I may say so. A valedictorian, student leader, a focus of girls' eyes, including my crush, he was an envy to everybody. They are memories that could never be gone. I went to college, to other places, to other pursuits. Finally, I came across with the name again. He's an ordinary man now, like me, not rich, not an idol, and I can say that I am ahead on some little pursuits, not on material things but on some "minor" accomplishments like family, friends, and, some "little" happiness. What went wrong? What happened to my idol? I think, just I think, he was an ordinary lad like me then, and he became an idol only in my imagination. Man grows, works, accomplishes, one time, and then some other time. We will always have our time here on earth, God knows, and will let you know when will that time that be. There's no one perfect. There is no one created more advanced than you. We are equal. Our imagination makes others perfect. Which should not be. We all have the capacity to advance, to improve, to be somebody more developed than we are now. And God permits it that way. Because we are semi-God, although we are not God. One thing is certain, we were created in His likeness, therefore we are near-perfect, we can strive to be great. And greater. Not just my idol, but me too. |
| Yesterday in the Army, that is the title of my first novel. Well, it's over a year now, and I'm half-way through. This is really like climbing a mountain, but I have to pursue it, an inner calling, an inner challenge, somebody, something inside's waking me up in that very unusual time of day, to jot, to write, to do something. It's about the years when I was in the armed service, at the prime of my life when I really didn't know where I was going. So I joined the army - the constabulary particularly - to make myself sure where to go. It wasn't really that good, I mean, what happened were inconsistencies, but fast-forward it to the present, it can be the Spirit telling me that that's really where you're going. "Anyway, you're coming here. This is where you are." |
| They say a horse has much strength. It can absorb the venom of a cobra, it's strength is used to measure the power of a machine. Can we have the power of a horse? We can indeed. Our mental strength can not be overpassed by a horse. We can overpower a horse by the strength of our imagination. I try it - by looking straight ahead. I try to do this by looking at the sky, a bright, early morning sky, and looking at the horizon from a farm, with a young mother with her babe taking advantage of the morning breeze and the smooth sunlight. Try it. You'll feel the horse, the one that absorbs the venom, and whose strength is used to measure the power of a machine. |
| I've written something about fear. I would like to stress it here that when I wrote "Lady in White", it was that time when there was fearsome quiet. I was afraid. Now that I'm writing this, I feel the same. The fear that I felt at that time is the fear that I feel now. But both are two different situations. That time it was midnight of "All Souls' Day", now it's day time. I feel I'm afraid I might not be able to write. We have to conquer fear at any time of day. |
| Expressing ideas and opinions is democracy. We all know that. Each of us has ideas distinct from others. This is what makes us humans. And sometimes they overlap one another. Because they overlap, conflict. Conflicts occur in every area of life, at home, at work, in the neighborhood. Religion tells us that God created man with a free will. Out of this free will, we produce ideas sometimes in conflict with God's will. If we humans find ourselves in conflict with God's ideas, how much more with our fellow humans. That's why we should be careful, we should act always according to our conscience if we don't want to find ourselves at war. The question of free will is mind-boggling question. Why did God give us free will only to be in conflict with His will? This needs a lot of soul-searching. |
| Now I know what Nanowrimo is. I know what I, what to feel, what to say, what to write. Could I be on the right track? Maybe, but it's just exciting, fascinating, to get into the realm of the unknown, and my white lady is there, always in company, always by my side. Hope to meet you there. At nanowrimo, the Philippines. |
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At least, I hope you have the time.
I'm sorry, but I really would've! That was hilarious.