Conquering mountains
What do I make of the Filipino conquest of Mount Everest?
Let’s put it this way — I wish so much to be glad about it.
I am no end awed by the physical prowess of athletes — their grace and strength as they perform in their chosen sport; their determination to push the limits imposed by the inherent frailty of their bodies when pitted against the laws of physics, biology,and nature.
I watch Chinese gymnasts on the parallel bars, twisting and turning with the speed of half-seconds in mid-air, then dismounting with finely-balanced weight — like a poem ending on a word that appeared randomly chosen but in fact determined with precision for the rhyme or the meter or the mere beauty of the sudden profundity or music it creates in conjunction with other words.
I admire the Filipino who succeeded in climbing Mt. Everest. It is achievement, truly.
Don’t I wish that our achievements as a people would always be akin to conquering mountain tops!
The metaphor does not escape me,or others like me who believe in levelling symbolic mountains as massive, cold and heartless as Mt. Everest. Mountains that form seemingly immovable barriers between the kind of nation I want for myself, other Filipinos and for future generations.
Ten political activists in two weeks. The protectors of the mountain stand guard and destroy those who appear to threaten the unholy mountain.
—–
Whenever I talk to my husband, I consciously try to keep my voice from sounding too happy, nevermind that the happiness is because I am talking to the person I love most in the world. He worries that I will stay here and never go back to the Philippines.
He worries that because of the ease of life here compared to chaos of daily living back home will make me decide to move here permanently.
What a dink my husband is sometimes.
There is really nothing here for me but this newspaper which I’m trying so hard to make useful to Filipinos here. Everything and everyone I love and care about are back home, in the Philippines; and I have no intentions of settling permanently anywhere but there.
It’s a weird feeling, being a foreigner. To be a stranger in a place where everything will always be tinged with the unfamiliar.
Home is a place where you are never a stranger. I’ve never been to Cebu City or Palawan, Romblon or Catantuanes, but I know that these places will never be alien to me.
I walk from my flat in Lamma to the nearest store 5 minutes away, and no matter how often I go there, nevermind that I’ve memorized where the shelves for the juice boxes or the spaghetti bottles are, or that the store clerk smiles and affably nods at me as I pay for my purchases, I will never feel comfortable going there.
—
Last night I talked with a group of resident Filipino artists, and I was glad for the opportunity to learn their sentiments about what’s going on back home. They’re trying to organize themselves into a fully-functional group; and some of them have quite progressive backgrounds. One was even a staff of the Collegian in the 80s, and a frontliner of the artist groups that made the effigies (the forebears of Ugat-Lahi, so to speak).
I got all their email and will regularly send them bits and pieces of reports from home. My ‘lolo’ from Kule (he called me ‘apo’) is particularly interested in ArkibongBayan, Pinoyweekly and Bulatlat.com.
These artists have professional day-jobs, executives and directors of graphics and advertising companies; and they seldom get a chance to talk to, say, people who have had college lives like they did (’sali-sali ng rali, makikipag-habulan sa pulis, mahuhuli sa LR…’). I’m urging them to create a painting, kahit maliit lang, basta a genuine product of collective work, and then send it home as an expression of their solidarity with the campaign back home against political repression.
