June 14, 2008 at 2:51 am (Uncategorized)
Here’s a beautiful prayer recently shared to me, yet one more source of solace, for truly what is most essential is learning how to be compassionate to one’s self and to others. . .
Prayer for Compassion
Spirit of Life, I give thanks for the opportunities to love
that present themselves in the turmoil of life.
When the light catches the tears in another’s eyes,
where hands are held and there are moments without
words, let us be present then, and alive to the possibility
of changing. Let us seek to make another’s wellbeing
the object of our concern. Let us seek to be
present to another’s pain, to bathe another’s wounds,
hear another’s sadness, celebrate another’s success, and
allow the other’s story to change our own. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 11, 2008 at 6:50 am (ARMM, Writing)
The abduction of Professor Octavio Dinampo of the Mindanao State University-Jolo (along with ABS-CBN’s Ces Drilon and her crew) had come as a shock to many of his friends and colleagues in the civil society network. But the shock immediately turned to grave concern when news reports have started implicating “Prof. Octa,” also chair of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus, to the kidnapping. For those who know the well-loved and respected professor and peace advocate, this mere insinuation is outrageous.
It was not too long ago that I had met “Prof. Octa” but he struck me as one of those kindred souls you meet once in a while, whom you know would be teacher and friend, no matter how brief the encounter is.
I met him when he gave a Bangsamoro situationer to one electoral conference I attended last year. The professor’s sharp insights, delivered with clarity and peppered with humor, dispelled the many warped notions, myths and stereotypes about the region and its people. I congratulated him on how well he put the issues in context in clear messages and punch lines. He also maintained a calm presence when rebuked by a clueless Manila-based participant, parrying her stings with his characteristic wit, depth of insight and dignified grace. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 26, 2008 at 9:50 am (Writing)
Jackie
Ongoing since last week (May 21-23; May 26-28), Mindanews’s editors and writers have been going back to school, this time, to train for narrative reporting under Janet Steele, an American professor from George Washington University, and Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian journalist working for Pantau, a media training organization operating in Jakarta, Banda Aceh and Ende. (For more on this, see www.mindanews.com and clicked on the 1st Mindanao Summer Institute of Journalism icon). One writing exercise required of us was to use the “I” in a two-page double-spaced story. Below is my ‘attempt’ submitted last May 23:
“Mom, we need to bring Jackie to the doctor today. He looks weak.” My ten-year-old son Xandro cried out, his large brown eyes starting to get misty with tears, as he anxiously paced back and forth in front of me. I looked at him and asked, “Why, what happened?”
“Jackie is seven years old – but aren’t dogs supposed to live for ten years?” he asked, a silent plea in his voice, begging me to please do something, ‘not to let Jackie die’. Jackie is a dachshund and he first came to us seven years ago when Xandro was only three. My son, who is an only child, practically grew up with Jackie, his beloved playmate. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 17, 2008 at 6:35 am (Writing)
Wanderlust: “a strong or unconquerable longing for or impulse towards wandering“
Years back, while I was still teaching journalism and essay writing at the university, I chanced upon Salon.com’s ‘Wanderlust’, a collection of wonderful, elegant prose dedicated to “putting the romance and the passion - the ‘unconquerable longing’ - back into travel writing,” as editor Don George wrote in the introduction. Ever since then, I was hooked and would often scour for travel articles written by Pico Iyer, Bruce Chatwin, Isabel Allende, and a few others more whose writing Salon.com had described as having that “combined sense of courage, passion and wonder.”
Back then, I could only dream about going out, exploring the world, and getting into travel writing as my life merely spun around the usual classroom and university work that went on for about five years. A so-called ‘quiet life’ as a teacher came more as a matter of choice so I would have more time to care for my little child at that time. I had just then left a job as a lawyer in a government office that required lots of travel time. The choice came one day when I was caught in a storm somewhere in a resort in Dipolog where I was attending a week-long conference, just when I needed to rush home to tend to my toddler who had a sudden bout of fever, and it took me all of two days to get to Davao. I took the first bus out but later on in my rush, as I embarked on the pier, I almost jumped into a ferry boat that was already slowly moving outwards to the sea. I would have made it, yet it would also have turned disastrous, were it not for a kindly stranger who stopped me in time by gently holding both my shoulders from behind me. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 14, 2008 at 2:28 am (Personal Essays, Travel)
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Epiphanies On the Road to `Someplace Else’:
Journeys along the Thailand-Burma Border
“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over- a burning desire to go , to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here.” - John Steinbeck in “The Urge to be Someplace Else”
And so it was that I found myself one cold December morning riding at the back of an open pickup truck, the wind on my face, up through the misty mountain trails of Mae Hong Son at the Thai-Burmese border. There we were all seated on a mat spread across the floor of the truck, shivering at every burst of moist wind that only gets chillier as we climbed our way up the slopes. To shield my face from the cold, I draped it with a shawl that I kept holding on tightly lest it gets blown about by the wind. Yet, after a while, I decided to let go of it gladly, no matter how biting the cold is, and let myself be swept in by the wind and sunshine, and the stirring beauty of mist and green.
There, before me, are verdant mountains rising up to the sky filled with ferns and pine trees, and here and there are bamboo groves lying hidden on patches of shadows swathed across the valley. As we moved deeper into the mountains, there would be more other shadows I would see and, too, I would learn that amidst this tender beauty, the forest has held secrets and borne witness to deep and abiding sorrows.
Moments before, we rode pass by villagers on single file hunched on the ground, their bodies in synchronized motion toiling the rice paddies, and every so often we see gaudily-painted Buddhist shrines on the roadside where smoke from burning incense sticks would waft through the air. We have set out from the town at eight in the morning, while it was still draped in slumber and fog, and as whiffs of mist drifted over on to the nearby lake and up across Wat Jong Kham and Wat Jong Klang, the twin temples of the Buddhist monks in saffron robes, some of whom as young as six or seven, whose heads are shaven, and who at nighttime would fly lanterns with lit candles shooting up into the sky in blazing flares to the cheers of the crowd. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 5, 2007 at 3:54 pm (ARMM, Mindanao, Politics)
ARMM Electoral Watchdogs: The Duty and Context of Remembering
For former Ambassador Henrietta de Villa, the snapshot of images from the May 26 special polls in Lanao del Sur remains clear in her memory, kept alive by a conscious telling and retelling and one that she returns to constantly like a pilgrimage in her mind. “Sample ballots strewn like carpet on the floor, secrecy folders thrown to the winds, wads of envelopes with money brazenly handed to voters, youngsters of 16 and 17 casting ballots.”
It is with a voice of passion and quiet restraint that De Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting PCRV), recounts in a dream-like sequence the images that still sear her memory. “And oh, the pandemonium, shouting, pushing, fist fights inside the polling precincts, gunshots.” Read the rest of this entry »
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June 13, 2007 at 12:03 pm (Writing)
Just got back from a twenty-day assignment and finding myself back to doing basic news reporting, yeah, the hard news stuff. Digging out facts, double-checking data, “accuracy, accuracy, accuracy”, and writing the story fast so it could be carried to tomorrow’s news.
I had forgotten how tedious the work could be as it was more than a decade ago since I was in the field. Particularly when upon writing the story, you realize the questions that should have been asked, the facts that should have been verified, and how that basic background info should have been available, pronto, because deadline is just an hour away. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 9, 2007 at 12:19 pm (Media, Mindanao)
Media: Watching the Watchdog
The Philippine media is taking its ‘watchdog’ role seriously. Recently, the local media in Davao City formed a body to monitor reportage on violence against women’s cases and take an active role in the public information campaign to help popularise the UN Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Composed of representatives from print, broadcast, news services and advertising, the ‘Monitoring Board on Violence in Media’ also aims to clarify and define the media’s role in mainstreaming gender in the media and in the city’s policies and programmes. “This will definitely lead to more gender-fair reportage on women,” says Amalia Bandiola-Cabusao, Convenor of the board and Editor-in-Chief of Mindanao Times. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 9, 2007 at 11:52 am (Music)
Songs Our Mothers Sang: A Journey to the Inner Universe
By Charina Sanz (Newsbreak. Vol. 4 No. 7, April 12, 2004)
A hush fell upon the crowd as the lights began to dim. Here, inside a room in the Grand Men Seng Hotel in Davao City, psychology professionals and students were about to start a workshop called “Making the Unconscious Conscious.” In one corner of the room a duyan (hammock) hung from a panel; in the middle was a painting of a tribal woman lulling a child to sleep. But all eyes were riveted to a young woman sitting on a rocking chair, her eyes closed. Moments later, the first bars of Lucio San Pedro’s haunting lullaby, “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan,” filtered through the room. A voice began singing: “Sana’y di magmaliw, ang dati kong araw, nang munti pang bata, sa piling ni nanay….”
It was the voice of actress Chin-Chin Gutierrez, who sang as she walked slowly toward the woman in the middle of the room. As Gutierrez stood behind the woman, she rocked the chair gently. Her voice was lyrical, plaintive. The young woman in the chair wept. ”I never heard my mother sing me lullabies,” the young woman later told the crowd of about 80 attending the workshop, which is part of the Mindanao-wide Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) conference held in Davao. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 9, 2007 at 11:09 am (Music, Personal Essays, Uncategorized)
‘Winged Notes’: Remembering My Father
On New Year’s Day, during the early afternoon siesta lull when all is silent after a night of revelry, I found myself prying open the old brown piano stool that was once my father’s. Inside, dust had gathered on yellowed sheets of piano pieces, Papa’s collection which he lovingly kept since he was a young man. I know because he scribbled on one of the sheets the date “November 27, 1960” when he was only 20 years old.
I leafed through the piano sheets which faintly smelled of mothballs and arranged them according to the songs I love. The titles I know by heart since childhood, the lyrics, too, and the melodies. “Lemon Tree”, “Tammy”, “Run Samson Run”, “You’re My Everything”, “Till Then”, “To Love Again” were among his favorites. One of the earliest memories I have of my father was him playing on the piano and singing “Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet…” I could still see him swinging his head.
This was how I came to learn music at an early age, watching my father play love songs to my mother, for it was to her, whom he would call on to sit beside him, that he dedicated his songs. My mother would pretend to be busy with housework, embarrassed by my Papa’s open display of affection. But it was his songs played on the piano, my mother would later confess, that endeared him to her and my grandparents who had a beautiful Mercedes piano in their old house at General Luna. There he would woo her and, merrily, played all the way to her heart. Read the rest of this entry »
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