Lost Spaces

I’m losing the spaces that make up my world

Like layers of an onion being peeled away one by one,

My life becoming smaller and smaller,

I can fit it in my hand.

I didn’t even get to say good bye

To every day settings that were significant in hindsight.

Now the same doors that keep out the danger

Lock me in with the keys.

I am learning those spaces are never mine to begin with

They are shared, stolen, or lost.

But one thing is mine, there is only my room – the safest place on earth,

There is only my bed – the sanctuary I enter with bare feet

Leaving all of my roles at the foot of the door.

There is only the early hours of morning,

Stillness assured.

There is only me – as I am,

And I stay for as long as I can, for as long as the world deems acceptable,

For as long as time allows,

Because here time is kinder.

Picking Up Bambam’s Fight

It’s funny how the major and seemingly minor points of your life can be traced and how their connections form the line of your life’s path.

I remember in high school, I dreamed of being a writer. In college, I believed I would be a journalist. I never imagined I would work in government, take up public administration and policy in graduate school, and again work for government, yet here I am.

I had many reasons to study again. I had just resigned and practically I wanted to advance my career, but at the core of it was idealism. Maybe by learning more, and becoming more, I could do more. It only dawned on me later on that I was actually taking after my grandmother, subconsciously and effortlessly following in her footsteps.

I remember a conversation I had with my mom about a characteristic we found in common with my grandmother and the women in our family. Well to put it simply, we all had tempers. We could not sit still in the face of wrong or injustice. Our natural instinct is to be angry at the ‘wrongness’ of it. That’s why speaking up has never been difficult for us, it takes more effort for us to be calm and to choose our battles rather than to speak up or to act.

We called my grandmother “Bambam”. But outside of the family she was Rizalina Magalona, assistant commissioner for the BIR. She served there for more than 30 years, more than my lifetime, and she was known for her integrity and her honesty.

When I say ‘known’ I really mean ‘targeted’. In an environment where dishonesty, corruption, and bribery are the norm, a public servant who refuses to steal, who goes by the rules, and who demands to do things the right way, becomes famous for being different. Or for being rare.

A PCIJ article on the unexplained wealth of BIR officials even quotes my grandmother:

“Like most government officials and personnel, the top monthly salaries at the BIR do not go beyond five figures. Thus, if a tax bureaucrat relies on just salary alone, it is unlikely he or she will be able to accumulate very much” says retired BIR assistant commissioner Rizalina Magalona, who is well known in the bureau for her honesty…” (Bacalla, 2003).

Additionally, you have to understand, my grandmother had to raise four children, majority of the time on her own, since my grandfather died when my mother was only 8 years old. In that respect, you could consider her to be a single mother-government employee. That makes her service and legacy all the more humbling, and to me, even heroic. Given the opportunity, and an enabling, corrupt environment where no one would bat an eye if you took a little more under the table, she never did. Never. And she was not quiet about it, in fact, she demanded a new norm. I bet a lot of people taught she was crazy.

That’s me being carried by my mom, my back to the camera.

Her integrity may have attracted enemies, but it surely attracted many more friends. And our family would often receive spillovers of this friendship from people who loved my grandmother when she was alive and long, long, after.

I think Bambam’s work and principles were essentially extensions of her faith. She was a strong, Christian woman. She read her bible in the morning before or after walking around the village to exercise. She attended bible studies (and would sometimes debate with pastors). She listened to Don Moen cassettes, enrolled in theology classes, kept a journal, and led her own bible study with my cousins and I.

We lost Bambam in 2005. A stroke, like an ‘off switch’, took her suddenly and immediately when she was doing her morning exercises in our garden.

I didn’t understand then what it all meant. I didn’t really think we would lose her days after she fell. But looking back, I couldn’t think of a better way. I’m sure that morning, she was talking to God when He took her.

Sometimes I wish I could talk to Bambam as I am now, and ask her what she thought of what was happening in the country. I would give anything to get her take on the President’s abuse of power, disrespect of women, extrajudicial killings, flagrant abuse of human rights as well as her opinion on the ‘quality’ of senators we have now. Could you imagine an Ilongga grandmother in a floral daster shouting about with her fists up? There could not be a more amusing and comforting sight.

I want to tell her that I’m tired. I’m tired of loving my country. Many days I lose my fight, and it all feels hopeless, and justice and democracy seem to be long lost ideals of a former time. Sometimes I feel we’ve lost. And maybe we have.

But then I get these small reminders. I remember her with every visit to Iloilo. I remember her when we discuss good practices in public administration. I picture her when I encounter the civil service code of ethics and the anthemic “public service is a public trust”. I see her framed picture shaking hands with then President Cory Aquino, the two of them sporting the same curly hair and glasses. And I feel her somehow, cheering me on.

I wonder if Bambam ever thought of giving up. I wonder if she ever considered stopping. Maybe not. She was always the toughest of us.

The fight is never over. And the points in my life that led me to where I am now are in many ways, thanks to my grandmother – the values she set, the example she left, and the fire in her blood that continues to run in our veins. Strong, faithful, unapologetic, and brave. And for that I will always be grateful.

If she were alive today, I wonder how we’d look standing side by side, and how tall I would be by comparison. I’d be happy to stand even just close.

BIR – Bureau of Internal Revenue

PCIJ – Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Bacalla, T. (2003, February 7). BIR Officials Amass Unexplained Wealth. Retrieved from: http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/BIRwealth.pdf

UP

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Tether

I could not forget the saddest eyes

Shifting in all directions but mine

As you found the words to your story

Unashamed but calculated

Because you did not want anyone’s sympathy/

And as I looked into those eyes

In quiet reverence, I had to ask myself

If my ears were worthy of your history

And as you spoke, my memories tethered to your words

So this is how miracles happen in the sharing of pain/

I could not forget the saddest smile

A complicated creature, born and made

Of tiny breaks of skin, mouth, and teeth, and the saddest eyes

You looked at me, finally,

And everything was warm, a secret prayer began.

• 

I’m afraid of losing you

Dear Friend,

We have all lost too much, and so many. And yet the numbers fail to describe the weight of all that is lost, of all who have jumped from heights to become weightless, of all who are left behind to carry them from the concrete only to burry them 6 feet below.

All of humanity cannot save all of humanity but maybe if we work hard enough on the few entrusted to us, then maybe just maybe, we can save each other. You from the darkness, me from having to lose you.

I love you and I am afraid of losing you, even as you struggle and fight each day. I know that it is exhausting, and difficult, and impossible. I know that some of the good days feel briefer and rarer. I may not fully know or understand or see, but I want you to keep fighting even if some battles are lost. I want you to continue waging war.

And if I could be selfish, I’d want you to live for as long as you possibly can. I want to keep getting notifications about the parts of your life you choose to reveal to the world. I want to continue hearing your stories, your jokes, your songs, your poems, and if you choose to, your problems, your fears, your secret pains. I want to see you age and hear you complain about your back. I want us to compare the greyness of our hairs, the lines under our eyes, and the spots at the back of our hands.

I want you here, alive and breathing and living.
You are so wanted and you are so loved.

May your light never die.

 

 

Grief is like falling in love

Nobody warns you that grief is like falling in love.

When you lose someone you love, your world ends in every possible way except for the literal sense. The earth still spins, there’s still traffic in EDSA, you still have work the next day, but your world ends. Abruptly. Completely.

All you can think about is her. Even when you try not to, especially when you don’t. The awareness of the moment when you are finally thinking of something else is a trap that sends you right back to thinking of her. Your mind multi-tasks. You think of her even as you compose that email. You think of her even as you stir the sugar in your coffee that’s already gone cold. There is a window though. Right at the moment you wake up is that small window when you are not thinking of her. And then it dawns on you. The clarity, the truth, that she’s gone.

All the songs you hear are about her and for her. Whatever time or genre or context. They were made for her. And when songs about loss actually do play, you break down in a cycle of laughter and tears. And you curse Adele for the beauty and the pain in her voice.

You are addicted to firsts and lasts. Her last words. The first time you met. What she wore last. All the firsts she will never get. You imagine a future without her. Various versions. And you wonder if such a future is even worth it. You wonder if such a future is even imaginable since the present is already driving you mad. You wonder about all the “what ifs”.

What if I spent the entire Sunday with you?
What if I took you to this place sooner?
What if I had given you more time?
What if we actually followed through with all of our plans?

You play the role of the suitor. You offer flowers. You offer endless promises to assuage the guilt and the regret. You woo the time lost. You make up in small ways, in big ways, all too late. Gifts that will never reach her.

And just like love that is unrequited, every little pain can be connected to the overall motherboard pain of losing her. And what’s worse is that you secretly love the pain. Because it is justified. And you feel that any other way of feeling is an unjust response to having lost a person that meant so much to you. Any other response would be wrong. Any other response would be cheating. You MUST feel broken because she kept something whole in you. And losing her is losing that. And losing her is losing tiny bits of everything.

Grief is such an attention-seeker. Grief is so demanding. Because if it doesn’t compel you then it cannot run its course. And if it cannot run its course then your heart cannot love again.

“Let me pass” it says.

“So that afterwards, you can come through and come out of the tunnel and into the light”

“So that you can love again”

 

 

The Introvert

She speaks like she breathes, words fast, light, and infinite

He is quiet because he listens,

And if talk is in the forecast, deep thought must precede it.

 

But he does speak, unmistakably,

With his hands, his eyes, his nods, and glances

And they converse like a dance to the prompts of each other’s thoughts.

 

She listens. He speaks. She nods. He laughs.

She leans as she does, and he learns to give in,

And not think too much.

Leaving

I take back all the words I said
In blind love and open trust,
Gather them piece by piece in patient pace
To someday scatter to the deserving.

I breathe easy
As I claim the wind that was knocked from my lungs
The day you left
Marked in memory like a war waged, fought, and won.

I sing this history
This self-taught melody
Of grief embodied
In a grateful goodbye:

“Thank you for leaving”

What I do for a Living

Travelling to the province is like travelling to a new world entirely. When you are born into the crazy engine-pump that is the city, growing up, studying, and working there, you only ever know a certain kind of life.

My first fieldwork for my first job took me to Negros Oriental, Cebu, and Bohol.

I work under a project of DOST and PHIVOLCS called “DEWS-L”, an early warning system for landslides. It has 50 sites all over the Philippines which need visiting from time to time, to work with communities and to train them in community-based disaster risk reduction and management.

Everyday we report to work in the mountains. Our daily commute includes a van, or a multi-cab or a habal-habal because it is the only way to get to our venue, give or take a few rivers. We drive by roads and highways with the rolling mountains to our left and the overwhelmingly blue ocean to our right.

We have fruit trees of star apple, mango, sampaloc and langka as our canteen. Sometimes your food craving literally falls off trees.

We work with farmers mostly, in the form of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, teenagers, children, and the occasional dogs and goats that make an appearance at the Barangay Hall.

There are no elevators to take us to our site, no flights of stairs, just good, old-fashioned, climbing. I am a neophyte mountain-climber. I’ve slid and tripped so many times but I learned that whether you’re climbing up or down, you have to run. Sometimes, you have to crawl, leap, and hold on to shrubs and tree branches.

Professional mountaineers may not even count the type of climbing we do but I’m sticking with my definition: if it looks like a mountain and if you’re climbing it, it’s mountain climbing!

The toughest I had to climb was our site in Brgy. Manghulyawon, Negros Oriental which is a 15-minute walk and a 45-minute climb under the unyielding sun. The site had barely any trees for shade, just dry earth and knee-high grass. One of the steps along one of the perceivable pathways had a hole. When I peeked inside, I saw a snake’s head poking out. I ran down in panic crying “snake! snake!”.  When our guide came for a look, he assured me it was only a frog.

In the city, we watch out for pickpockets. In the mountains, we watch out for snakes… or frogs.

The people in the communities we visit are simple, appreciative, and kind. In our talks, we do our best to take the science down while getting the message across.

I remember an officer of our local landslide monitoring committee in Sibonga, Cebu, led the prayer for our lunch of nilagang native chicken, tuyo stewed in tomato sauce, pancit, and coke sakto.

She thanked the Lord for our service, for our coming there, for our lives. She prayed that our training would be successful and that their committee would not give up or grow tired in fulfilling their role. She said in Bisaya, “may you never grow tired of us and of coming here”. That one prayer alone could make up for foregone Saturdays and missed Sundays at church.

Our field allows us to communicate with the LGU. Some people who work in government are really, really, really good, and generous with their time and energy. (I wish we could say the same for all government workers). All of the municipal disaster risk reduction officers we worked with are helpful and kind. Most of them work two jobs but are paid for only one. Some don’t have permanent offices. One is still waiting for a government-issued fire truck. We’ve met some mayors and vice mayors along the way as well.

Field work can be exhausting, even when you’re only in your early 20’s. Some days I really, really, really, love my job. Some nights I miss home (though I don’t admit it to myself as a coping mechanism, maybe I will later on in the flight back to Manila).

Some days feel like the climax-episode of the Amazing Race. Getting to Bohol from Cebu was a whirlwind of unexpected, unfortunate, twists and turns. We had to leave a lot of stuff behind at the port, both on purpose and by accident. I grieve for the hoodie I just bought and left behind.

But then there are blessings along the way, from losing your transport in Cebu to gaining one before you could step off the port in Bohol.

Here’s a conversation we had with kuya Neil whom we just met at the Tagbilaran port:

Me: Kuya malayo po ba ang airport? Naghahatid din po ba kayo papuntang airport?

Kuya: Hindi naman malayo. Mag-trycicle nalang kayo, mas mura pa.

Me: Kuya pwede mo kaming sunduin ng mas maaga? 6:30am?

Kuya: I will do my best.

Some days, your dirty clothes outnumber and outweigh your clean ones. Some afternoons, it rains on you, hard, and you pray you don’t get sick. Some nights, you get golden opportunities to do laundry. Some days can be dark and troublesome and unsafe. I find simple joys in a Mcdonalds that’s just a walking distance away, fresh towels, water dispensers, and coffee, always, always coffee. I find pleasure in small-town bakeshops, hearing anecdotes of our drivers, discovering a place in the Philippines I had no idea existed.

Maybe field work is a balance of giving your best, most excellent work, while maintaining that spirit of adventure and openness to new worlds. If it were up to me, this should be a part of what we all do for a living.

But then again, I may just be developing a separation anxiety from the field. How can I give up this wonderful, unexpected, exhausting, exhilarating workplace and go back to our office in Manila?

Well, there’s always the next field.

Right now I’m itching to go back home. I miss my bed with the longing of a thousand OTWOL fans.

Para kay Scud

You were just a little bit older than me. I remember my dad’s stories about you, how in your college years until your 20’s, you were able to change the lives of so many in Naga and how you were still doing so, even when you had a full-time job in Manila, even when you received news of your cancer.

I knew you first by the stories of people who experienced the ripple effects of your light. But when you spoke at our youth service, in front of teenagers and adults, I realized these stories were an understatement.

You were wearing a black shirt and jeans. You were bald (I learned you shaved your head at will later on). You were so happy and excited! You could’ve been talking about a concert rather than the colossal struggle you were facing.

Your testimony moved me to tears. You said wherever we are and whatever we do, we must do it well for our God. “If you are a student, study well. If you are working, work well.”

You said that God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called. Finally, you said the words I never expected to hear but I will surely never forget:

“I’m excited for what God will do next in my life”.

It’s hard to believe that was only last May 2015, barely a year ago. It’s hard to believe that that brilliant life is over.

But I hope you know that you are still creating ripples in the lives of those you may have met only once. You have lived your years so very well that in the grand scheme of things, in God’s sovereignty, they may not have been so short after all.

I genuinely wish I could live such a brilliant life.

I regret that I could not know you more.

I regret that we didn’t tell you sooner our ‘thank you’s’ and ‘good byes’.

We are grateful for your life—and how you have given us a picture of what it means to give everything to God.

Salamat, Scud.

“Precious in the eyes of the Lord are the death of His saints” Psalm 116:15