Looking forward to Monday
Best news I’ve heard in a long, long while: the Supreme Court junks the rebellion charges against the progressive party-list lawmakers. I would scream with happiness if I wasn’t also wary; nakakadala ang gobyernong ito. The SC has laid down a just and very well-written (biting and acerbic in all the right places) decision; but I would much rather do my celebrating once Ka Bel is actually released — meaning he’s free to walk out of his detention hospital room at the Philippine Heart Center without a phalanx of CIDG agents trailing him.
Justice secretary Raul Gonzalez has so far refrained issuing any sarcastic rebuttals against the SC decision that had a few choice swipes against the DOJ and those who facilitated Ka Bel’s arrest February 25 last year. Let’s all cross our fingers that he does shut up about it.
We are all looking forward to Monday. We expect Ka Bel to be freed by then.
This afternoon he was cheerful and relieved, and he was swamped by visitors (more than usual, I mean). Everyone was happy, but at the core of it all, like an atom of bitter in much sweet, they were also cautious, afraid of being yet again betrayed and disappointed by this government who has previously reneged on its earlier decision to allow Ka Bel’s release upon the prodding of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
The Beltran family — the wife and the children — are thinking of filing charges against the Macapagal-Arroyo government, particularly the DOJ officials and staff who had him arrested on the strength of lapsed warrant. Needless to say, there is no end to the family’s outrage. They demand indemnification for grievous moral damages.
Anyways!
It’s really hard to keep on the light-hearted side of things, especially when it comes to the doings of this incumbent illegitimate government. It’s one long series of injustices after another.
But the idea of Ka Bel being released is such a happy thought. We are looking forward to Monday. He is 74 years old, and he continues to fight against social injustice and for genuine freedom and democracy in the Philippines. Hindi talaga lokohan o biruan ang labang ito.
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The Booksale branch in Star Mall along EDSA corner Shaw Boulevard has an amazing stock. I brought Carrie Fisher’s ‘The Best Awful’ and Maxine Hong Kingston’s biographical ‘The Woman Warrior’ and I can’t get wait to get at them.
When I was in college , my friend Nova and I considered Carrie Fisher our own personal guru. We would quote her quirky, self-deprecating and ultimately painful observations about life and failure at , eherm, love and longing and often find similarities between our own lives and the experiences of her (Carrie’s) characters who were, for the most part, successful, intelligent people who did not know how to life with their success and often, well, fucked up because they THOUGHT and analyzed about the people closest to them way too much.
(I guess that also says a lot about how we were when Nova and I were 17 year olds, heck. Loser types).
I have a few journals wherein I I wrote paragraphs taken from these Fisher books and ruminated on them. Thankfully, I stopped doing this oh, when I was 24 or 25. I mean, heck, what does it mean when you empathize with characters who are often so messed up that they end up in the hospital having their stomachs pumped from taking too many painkillers; or characters that hide behind the japonica to spy on their ex-boyfriends?
Not that I ever took drugs or spied on any of my ex-boyfriends. I admit, however, to being a fan of Flanax and to ignoring the hell out of ex-boyfriends (saves me the embarrassment of having to acknowledge my failures, sheesh)…
Why do we take so much comfort from books?
I mean, why the heck do I take so much comfort from reading? I mean, it’s plain scary how sometimes I feel a certain way (blue, angry, in-between angry and sad) and to cope with the disturbance and imbalance I flip though pages of books I’ve read way way before in search of a particular passage, a certain observation, the description of a passing moment or a life-altering event in the life of imagined people.
I am finding an explanation for my self and how I feel. I want a shape and form to the shapeless and formless scream that’s trapped inside me.
Tapos, I feel sane again.
I suppose it’s because of this: It comforts me to know that even in my lowest hours when happiness is a far gone memory and hope is a kite flying beyond my grasp because the string itself was cut off, I am not alone. Somebody else felt as messed up (or even more messed up)as I do.
