THE DAILY PROPHET

BLACK

2007-12-06T06:36:00.000+08:00

I’ve been to busy these days that there’s some slack in my blogging. But these sort of days may not be forever, and for certain there comes a time when normalcy would begin again.

For the meantime, I’d like to post this poem that I have wrote the most recent of all. “Black” is the title—perhaps inspired by the song title of one of my most fave rock band---or otherwise. But “Black” as a title is solid like a pure jewel, unhindered in its splendor, and unbending in its stand.

As a poem, it might not be so joyful and exuberant---but this might be just perhaps of some coyness that I felt once, when I wrote this poem specifically, and the seemingly downward emotions that are contained within it might or might not have been appertaining. It might have been of depression or of an emotional meltdown. Or the emotions might have just been a fruit of my playful discretion. Whatever.

Here it goes, I hope it would gain some form of critical triumph from my blog friends who would come and read this poem, and then criticize it. I hope they’d be so generous with their words. J

Black

Black as the night,
Dark like the moon on this August evening,
While the sea heaves a silent sigh,
I can see black as the color of the night.

Black is the heart that yearns so mightily,
A sudden scream, like thunder and lightning,
And in the midst of the ocean by which once I claim,
Lies the blackest of all sentiments.

Black is the elixir of love
That heals the cut that you made,
And dances away the sorrow
Of a forgotten kingdom where no one lives.

So dark is the sky
That bore your wounds,
With lies and masquerades, so malevolent
Like the edges of a cliff.

Black is the color of dreams,
That once was laid on my shoulders, as Atlas once did,
And dark is the road
That once had led me to you.

The Meaning of Life

2007-04-16T11:54:00.000+08:00

I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles—which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy.

This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let go of it for I could not rein it in my hands—no matter what.
I passed by the new barbershop just in front of the old Ever theater—one that had seen better days—and I thought I might get my hair done. I stared at a glass partition from a nearby store and had an inkling that my hair wasn’t as disheveled as I thought it was. I even saw it to be fitting to me despite the general rugged look and I had thought then that moviestars have lengthy hairs even if they were males, having that blown away look. I was a little worried that if one sports a blown away and rugged crown of hair and at the same time not being a moviestar, one might be easily taken for a madman walking the streets at high noon. But that sidewalk mirror was good to me and I felt that my uncut hair would be fit for a star. Some mirrors are good to me ; mostly they are not—especially those in my bedroom.

So I passed with having a quick haircut that day and hoped that the blown away look would be fitting enough for me for quite a number of days more. I then strolled farther down the city sidewalks and came towards a crevice full of DVD stalls and I felt a little blown away after seeing so many titles available and on a dirt cheap prices at that, considering that for 80 bucks, one can get a DVD disc that contains 8 to 12 movies in it, and most of them were blockbusters and of very recent release. Some of them were not even shown yet here in local theaters. That’s how tempting it was for movie aficionados like me. I could not say now that I haven’t had scored myself some pirated items before (I had been smoking a brand of cigarette smuggled from Hongkong when I was in college) and of course, it would be unthinkable for me to not have seen a pirated movie before. I had of course.

But while I was glancing on stacks and stacks of DVD disks, my mind was swinging between the forthrightness of not buying a pirated item and having a devilish pleasure on filling my hunger for movies at throwaway prices. I could always remember that video clip that goes with every movie I rent from video stores and the loud, thundering reminder that says: “You Don’t Steal A Car! You Don’t Steal A House! You Don’t Steal A Movie!”, and somehow my inner conscience is disturbed by such that whenever that clip goes in every movie I rent, I wanted to shout at whoever that guy behind the thundering voice and belch, “Stop It! I Heard You. You Don’t Have To Remind Me That All The Time. You’re Not My Mother!”

My inner conscience had gotten the better of me that time so I just slowly walk away from stacks and stacks of salacious movies and guilty pleasures. I then remember that a new Video City branch had opened just a block away and I headed immediately towards it. The moment I had gazed through the available movie titles, I felt an immediate surge of gleefulness inside me since I hadn’t expected that the new video store could offer such voluminous number of titles, especially of recent ones. The video store where I usually get my dose of movies is so miserably lacking in inventory that I guess I won’t be visiting it from now on, except perhaps in some momentary lapse of reason in the future.

I felt like a child lost in a sea of movie titles and I almost picked up every disk that had caught my eye, until I reached the “Drama” section and there in front of me was a copy of Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” and I was excited to high heavens. It had been much talked about in the net world about how good it was and for a long time, I was trying to get my hand on a copy of it, and for a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it for it would be unthinkable that it’d be exhibited in local theaters considering that it was released about three years ago. And I haven’t had seen any trace of it in every video rental store I went before.

I had anticipated this movie ever since I have grown a special fondness for oriental art films, especially those of the legendary filmmaker Zhang Zimou, whose film “Farewell To My Concubine” was so wonderfully entertaining and had primarily introduced me to other notable movies from China or Hongkong. Before that, ever since I was in high school, I had been delighted by the magic of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces like “Ran” and “Dreams”.

And so “2046” was about a writer who had become so engrossed about his own written piece that he saw himself being dragged into it, and feeling the pains and longings of the characters he had made himself. “2046” was a work about a train that once in a while travels towards the year “2046” and no one who goes there ever came back, except for one, the male protagonists. It is said that those who journey towards this strange destination are those who are longing for love, perhaps a kind that could not be found here at present, for how come they have to travel towards a point of no return just looking for it? What love is there out there that some have risk even their own mortal existence just to gain it? It was written by the writer that nobody actually knows how long for one to get to “2046”, for some it would be faster, but sometimes, to those unlucky travelers, it might take so long that they would start to lose their senses and sanity while inside the rain, having nothing to do except sit down and wait for the arrival time, one that is not definite and without any sign of coming. The main male protagonist in the novel had such kind of journey, one that was so lenthgy and seemingly unending that he fell in love with an android, an artificial human being stewarding the train.

The writer had his own life in the movie “2046”, a life lived sometime in the 1960’s where according to him “he just found himself to be in”. He earn his meals by writing columns and kung-fu stories for local dailies and billeted himself in a room with a door number that states “2046”. That was where he had sourced the title for his novel, a number which in his own mind had taken his fancy and unusual interest.

Along the way, he met a wife of another man named Bai Ling, who had runned away from her husband for having another woman and had rented a room just across his own. They slowly fell for each other and started a torrid affair filled with nights of passion and unhindered bliss. Until one day the woman asked him if ever he wanted to stick it out with him. But the writer wouldn’t agree to be exclusive to one single woman and stressed that he was seeing other women while he was having an affair with her. Bai Ling was furious and ended their relationship with tears flooding from her eyes and agitation painted all over her face.

They both started seeing other people and whenever they passed each other in public gatherings, they both pretend not to know each other and according to the writer, it was difficult to pretend and not notice her. It was clear that it was more difficult for Bai Ling to pretend and it showed so much in the utter sadness that found harbor in her teary eyes.
Six years later, the writer was in a relationship with a woman that had a similar name to a woman he had an affair so many years ago. It wasn’t Bai Ling, but another one who had resembled Bai Ling’s general appearance, a circumstance that had led me to ponder whether or not Bai Ling and Su Lizhen was one and the same person. The new woman eventually left the writer for some undeclared reason for she said, “she just have to go away”.

And inside a car—drunken and weary—the writer finally realized that he is starting to lose ‘the meaning of life’. He was thinking to himself and thought that six years ago, he had a chance to find the meaning of life when the beautiful Bai Ling offered herself to be his long time partner. But he had other ideas and now regretted it.

He met Bai Ling for one more time but the feeling was never the same aagain and it had seemed that in the end, he had entirely lose grasp on what in his mind was “the meaning of life”.
The movie “2046” eventually ignited in me the question about life and its meaning. I try to see myself in the writer’s own predicaments and evaluate if I had what he call as “the meaning of life”. Have I lost it? Or I am living it? Or perhaps, the meaning is just not clear at all.

One way or another, we all are trapped within the world we now dwell, sometimes embroiled in raucous routine everyday conducts, sometimes just swaying to where the wind blows, and often forgetting that at the end of the day, we might not be able to entirely grasp the so-called “meaning of life”. What’s in store for me when I grow old? Where am I heading? Am I happy or am I miserable?

Am I that sort of individual who would jump into a train and head to “2046”?
These are just questions and I hope that this momentary bout with depression would vanish like thin air. And then I’ll have in my full grasp the so-called “meaning of life” by then. Whatever that means.

THE BOY WITH THE SWIRLING SHIP

2007-02-08T21:19:00.000+08:00

What do you know; I’ve got another vivid dream last night. No angels though yet I feel it’s worth elucidating if only for reason that it is such a lucid chunk of visions in my head while I slept so deeply and it may evoke some meanings for me or for the lives we all live.

The dream started on a steep hill in a place I have never been to in my entire life but it felt like I was in Antipolo, because the rolling hills reminded me of the place called Cherry Hill, the site of a famous landslide disaster some years back and which I was able to have a glimpse of in television and newspapers. I asked in my mind what was going on since there were a lot of people outdoors watching some neighborhood event, out in the open field while the sun was shining so brightly and the wind was warm as the summer breeze.

Some bystanders answered me: “A boy from Japan was showing some flying ship.”

I stretched my neck out and see for myself what the whole fuzz was all about. As I heard the whirling sound that went “whrrrrrrrrrrrr….whrrrrrrrrrrr…….whrrrrrrrrrrr……….”, like that of a motorized toy, I saw then what was to my eye was a colorful contraption the size of a small-sized passenger car, say a Kia Pride, lunging directly towards the sky like a rocketship although it didn’t look like a rocketship at all, at least not the specific way it had looked to me. The flying contraption look like a very small version of the Columbus---the Nasa space shuttle.

I observed the flying motion of the “thing” and the viewer could actually see the boy inside it, probably doing some navigation through some control dashboard. But with the manner it moves from one side to another, up and down, in steep trajectory and then changing directions so sharply, you wouldn’t think that it is being driven by someone, it moves more like a remote-controlled toy helicopter, so unstable and without a clear direction. I felt a lot of concern for the safety of the boy.

Yet, despite the queerness of the flying contraption, it actually earned my amazement and glorification. When the boy alighted from it, I was among the throng of men and women who trooped to him like he was a hero or someone famous. I said to him in a loud voice: “ What you got there is a landmark invention!” The boy probably did not hear my declarations that he turned towards another direction without a hint that he noticed me.

I was slighted by the boy’s disregard but I really felt that the thing was such an important discovery and it may be the prototype of a transport that would change the way we travel forever. In fact, the way it was designed earned my fancy for it looked like a very huge toy that every boy or every man with a child’s heart would like to have from the downtown toy store. The color was also my favorite---blue, yellow and red.

I will describe to you how the thing probably works. The flying contraption would lunge towards the heights by a turbo on its below, just like any rocketship, and when it is up in the air, it’s outer core would swirl so fast in circular movement that you could hear its sort of annoying, but mild whirling sound. This motion of its outer core probably was the main mechanism that keeps the thing above ground, and it has a couple of protruding wings that are also attached to smaller turbo engines. These wings probably control the direction of the thing aside from helping it stay afloat. The flying contraption moves in a speed that I have never seen before and that made me a little doubtful of the thing’s design credibility, for the safety of the passenger may not be secured.

Yet again, despite its flawed functionality, I truly believed that the invention by the Japanese boy could be build up further if only he meets the right persons that could help him find some technology companies willing to put money for its development. If the thing could work, we may finally welcome age of flying cars and finally say goodbye to the monumental cruelty of traffic jams in our streets and highways.

The boy went to see some persons in a nearby building that looked like the station of the Armstrongs in the old anime series “Voltes V”, in short it was a science building with an ultra-modern look and hi-tech facilities with a very high-ceiling. Buildings in the anime world seems all have extraordinarily high ceilings. I followed him of course and went into the building myself which I found to be completely empty although the mainframes and other electronic equipment were running since the lights on them were blinking and some sounds are whirling, a sign that some automated machines were on. I reckoned that the boy was inside some highly secured rooms busy discussing with some important personalities in the tech world. So I went upstairs but I still find the place empty as a dune. I took the elevator and went down to the ground floor and as I headed towards the main exit door, I saw the Japanese boy coming out of a room that I was not able to notice before. His face was full of distraught and I could see that he was disappointed. I knew then that the talks did not go well.

I watched him tiptoed through the tiled floor and could hear the sound of his footsteps reverberating throughout the building, the heaviness of his emotions were easily felt. I approached him thinking that I might desire to shake the hands of someone who invented what perhaps may be the future of transportation. He shook my hands so briefly and went on with his heavy walk without even looking at my face. I followed this boy who was so young and yet so arrogant and said in a loud voice, “You should bring it to the attention of NASA.” At this, he turned back and I could see that he wanted to cry. He said, “I will try.” And he went on walking, now in a hurried manner, as if he wanted to get rid of me. I just reckoned that a genius boy like him could afford some bad manners so I did not took it so badly that he doesn’t respond well to my engagements towards him. I just wanted to help him.

That same afternoon, as the day approached twilight, the boy was in the field again with the onlookers still on hand. I went to see the show again. He was with his mother this time around and they were in stiff argument as to how the thing should be launched into the air. This was in stark contrast to the smooth and confident launching he had earlier in the day. After some words, both mother and son agreed on the manner the flying contraption should be placed on the ground, and the boy step into the thing and soon the machine hummed again in a whirling sound.

The flying contraption indeed went steeply into the air that my heart leaped a bit as I see what a wondrous thing it was that such a small machine could actually fly into the air---like seeing a flying car for the first time. Yet, after a while, the thing kept on lunging downward and it was a little painful to see it struggling to keep itself afloat. The boy might be horrendously dizzy by then as the flying contraption went up and down in the air. I myself became a little bit dizzy just watching the thing fly in the strangest of manner.

Soon, the boy alighted from the flying contraption and he was sweating all over. I wanted to ask him if the ship had some appropriate ventilations but I decided against it. I approach the boy again without any inhibition that he might utterly disregard me again. He did not. I meant that he finally talked to me more graciously than before.

“It was hard,” the boy said.

“Yeah. I could see that” I said meaning to console him.

I asked the boy “Why did the thing fly so bad the second time around?”

“ I was flying on a manual mode this time.” The boy said in a sad tone. It turned out that the boy run out of hydrogen fuel and it was too costly for him to source them in a huge volume, in order to keep the thing flying for a longer period.

As we walked together towards a more shadowy area, I could feel the sadness in his breath. He confided to me that that the scientists he was negotiating earlier wasn’t sold out about his invention mainly because they said that the thing could not retain enough fuel in order for it to reach enough distance. The scientists instead advised him to find out the solution for this major flaw of his invention.

I suggested to him to use nuclear fusion instead because this kind of fuel is light and with a small amount aboard, the thing could go far. I also advised him to go to America because in the Philippines, even our own inventors do not get much support from the Government. He just nodded to my suggestions and we shook hands as we bade goodbye.

At this point, I woke up to a cloudy morning where rain was threatening. The weather made me a bit heavy inside as I remember the predicament of the boy with the swirling rocketship in my dream. I hope he would listen to all my advices and go to America where everything is possible it seems. I hope his dreams would all come true. I laugh a little inside thinking how could I wish well someone who doesn’t exist at all but only a creature of my dreams. But I remember the boy well, and if there is some sort of a police line-up, I could point to him always.

After I took my breakfast, while sipping hot chocolate, I pondered what the dream meant to me. There were no angels in it but I felt that the dream wanted to impart something to me. As I analyze the visions I had that night in my sleep, I now believe that sometimes we all have some idea that could really fly but could not fly so high at first due to some major flaws and yet, if only we try a little harder and knowing where to go and what to find and whom to approach, that idea could go a long, long way and may even change the way we live forever. Amen.

Flying Through Cliffs

2006-09-28T09:59:00.000+08:00

The cherubim ahead of me looked back and screamed towards my direction, urging me to speed up as the winged creature was fast catching up with us. I had burst into the branches of woods in the night forest and I had to cover my face with my arms in order to clear my view, otherwise the branches of the trees would harm my eyes and the feint illumination offered by the moon would not allow me to navigate properly through the dark woodlands, and especially if a winged creature that was blacker than the night was coming at us with full speed.

The night creature was an old woman with wired and mangled gray hair and eyes that was redder than blood. I kept looking into those fiery eyes every time I look behind me, checking out if the creature was already nearing or still farther away, and fear had never been so evident in me. The night creature had wings that were velvety, like they were made of black satin or a kind of a soft garment that are often used for curtains. I thought that perhaps those creatures knew how to sew and made their wings by themselves. I never knew exactly.

When I was a child, I had so many dreams where I was flying with cherubim or child angels. They never spoke to me in spoken words but somehow I could here them speak to me through their eyes, as if they had the power of mental telepathy. They just stared at me all throughout and I were just amazed at how beautiful and handsome they looked. The reason perhaps why I did not initiate conversation with them was mainly because of their foreign appearance. They had rounded faces and wavy blond hairs just like American babies that I saw in television back then. I reckoned that maybe they spoke in a different tongue. They were too young but their gazes seem to pronounce to me a much older and mature mind.

There was that cliff that I kept falling from every time I reach its vicinity, as I arrive at it with bursting speed right out the thick greeneries, and suddenly finding out that below me was a very steep cavity and although I was sort of flying through the air, the sudden change in height always threw me into deep confusion that my fluttering through the air became distraught and discordant. So my glide was often disturbed and my wings wouldn’t work so well that I start falling and I couldn’t stave my fall that I begin to scream so loud while my fall would accelerate. And there I was falling from a steep cliff and I remember that feeling of falling so well even towards this day, that whenever I ride the Ferris’ Wheel in older days, that familiar feeling come speeding back to me like a mirage. In those dreams of falling from cliffs, always I would wake up before I touched the ground but whenever I woke up, I find myself falling from my bed instead that my scream would be heard throughout the household. My grandfather would be awakened by my scream and he would make me drink cool tap water each time.

So in one of those flying dreams, we were again being chased furiously by the winged serpents of the night, and again I was there huffing and puffing through the woods trying to evade those night creatures, and I was scared like hell as usual. But the other cherubim were surer about themselves that they never fell and flew like they were masters of flight and in fact, they were just being playful and seemed to be toying around with the winged creatures, as if knowing that those hideous creatures won’t be catching up with us in any way. But I was so unsure about myself, and I feared the flying serpents like no other that my eyes were so wide-eyed with fright.

In order to lose our pursuers, we would thread into the thick forest and caverns at the side of the mountains and that night, we did the same routine until we finally lose them. There was great relief among our group as we proceeded to glide into the wide-open air and beneath us were great spread of grasslands with some assemblages of trees here and there, like oasis in a broad desert land. We decided to descend into a particular cluster of trees and there we settled on the branches. It was dark but the moon was so illuminating that there was some sort of daytime in the night. I could exactly remember how the branches of the trees would move and bounce as we drifted from one place to another, trying our darnest not to cause any noise as the cherubim which I always conversed with signaled to us to keep silent by putting his forefinger across his tight lips. I immediately wondered why we had to remain still and silent although I reckoned then that it was perhaps for us not to be detected again by our night pursuers. But I was to learn later on that the order to remain silent at that particular juncture in our night venture was mainly because of a group of men and women that was forming a circle around a campfire just nearby, about 20 meters away from us. The trees we hanged on were fairly tall that we could see all of the activities below with the widest of view and there I saw those people chanting some unknown prayers with their hands clasp and turgid. I saw the woman that had been one of our pursuers among the circle below and at that time, she had no wings on her back and was upright just like any human being. She was a shape-shifter I had reckoned then, a human being that could transform itself into a winged serpent when the night comes. I felt some fright again upon seeing the face of the woman who was always pursuing me, like I was her favorite prey. I felt leaving immediately but I could not just disregard the earlier instruction to stay silent. So I stayed and observed the proceedings below and the fire in the middle of the circle was blazing so thoroughly that it was reflected on our faces, while we clung to the branches with bated breath. I thought for a moment there that a male member of the circle had noticed us that he turned his gaze slowly towards our direction. I saw the eyes of the male person and they were so black all over like it has no white in them but all pupils and he looked like a dead person to me with his face pale as talcum powder.

All of a sudden, we heard the ruffling of the leaves just behind our position and we turned abruptly to see what had caused the noise. To our utter dismay and fright, it turned out that some of the winged serpents had found us again and we had to scurry in a jiffy and up we were trying to evade our usual pursuers again. Of course, we had been able to dodge them again by trying to confuse them into trees and caverns---the usual method we apply. Those winged creatures seem to have a weakness when flying into trees and dark crevices of the mountains, as if their guide system is all too flawed and far less superior than ours that it takes them so long to get out of those nooks and caverns.

And I will end this note about flying and falling from cliffs upon a certain dream where me and the other cherubim were slowly approaching the earth from a higher region of the sky, like from the clouds. As the ground became nearer, we softly and gradually descended towards a particular tree. It was nighttime and below us was a carnival that was set up so sparingly in the middle of a barriotic neighborhood. There was only one contraption in the middle of the carnival, or “carnaval” in Filipino common language, and that was a very high Ferris’ Wheel and nothing much else except for tables were men and women trooped into for some joint activity, like gambling perhaps on a dice game. There were a lot of people mingling about, as what would be expected of such event and they were walking about around the main ride while some other played card games and gambling on the wayside. It was sort of a busy scene and I saw a man in short pants carrying a child and some dogs loitering around. Just across the site of the “carnaval” was a busy and well-lighted sari-sari store where a group of men where around a wooden table, seemingly on a drinking binge. Some children where gazing and dawdling around the Ferris’ Wheel, gawking at the giant steel structure as if it was their first time to have witnessed such contraption. Around the “carnaval” where wooden houses of various sizes and style, the kind of shelters one see in a typical Filipino slum, where a few houses tower in height while others were smaller in comparison but more in number.

As I stared meaningfully towards the somewhat animated scene below, I had wondered to myself what place that was and why we came to it with evident purpose. One angel said to me: “ This is the place where you are going to.”

I didn’t responded to the declaration of the angel as if accepting it like a non-negotiable fact of life. But in my mind, I had wanted to ask why I was destined for that place and wondered to myself if there were any other places where I could choose. Like I knew that it wasn’t my call at all, I just shut up.

THE ALLIGATOR RIVER

2006-07-17T13:57:00.000+08:00

I didn’t know what the dream meant exactly and what it tried to convey to me. My dream last night was as surreal as the paintings of Picasso, full of abstract images, those surprising angles and unexpected curves. Wait, I may be speaking to soon. I think there’s a clear story in that dream of mine and I can remember too well how the story in that dream went. I may be able to relate to you that story, if only you’d be patient enough with my narration, which at times struggles for the right words to use.

At the beginning of that dream, I was walking through a dark alley, along an unpaved road and muddied ground where banana trees and huge plants lined the passageway. I knew immediately that I was in some faraway barrio when I could not see any electric post that usually decorates every urban street. At the start of the dream, the afternoon was becoming darker and darker but it wasn’t so dark yet like nighttime but a shade of darkness whenever twilight is fast nearing its end. I went on walking as my surrounding became darker and darker and all I could hear was deep silence and the crooning of crickets in the foreground; the gentle slap of the wind against the bushes along the road reminded me that the weather was a little hazy then. I was completely alone and the dimness had stirred some fear in me that I started to take hurried steps, as my feet felt the stony hard ground below. After some brisk walking, I finally reached a wooden house with bamboo fences and for some reason; I knocked on the sliding wooden door. The house was of fair size and a little bit aged, the sort of dwelling place many wealthier farmers have in the barrios.

A middle-aged man wearing no shirt on him came to meet me and opened the door. He threw a squinting look at me as if he knew that I was arriving at exactly the time that he went to open the door and that he had indeed expected me to come. “She is not here,” the man said while he held a plow in one of his soiled hands. Apparently in the dream, I was looking for a certain woman.

“It couldn’t be,” I told the man. “She should be here”.

“You are wasting your time,” the man retorted although his tone was not at all dire but a little welcoming, as if to console me for not meeting the person I was looking for. “Better yet, you just have to buy this,” the man continued as he handed me a small plastic package that contains some matter that I have no knowledge of. I examined the object that the man tried to sell to me and I said I am not interested in them and I do not have any use for it. The man said “Come on. Buy it and I’ll tell you where she is,” the man insisted as I could see his face frown from the initial setback of his sales pitch. That seems to be a good deal I had reckoned then because I had the feeling that I would even give away my house just to see that woman. Before I could ask how much the plastic object was, I saw the woman appeared through the main door of the wooden house and I was jolted suddenly. Perhaps she had noticed me so she hurried towards the back of the house by passing through a narrow passageway. All I saw was her back and her long black hair bobbing up and down as I tried to run after her. When I reached the back of the house, she wasn’t there anymore. The house was actually standing beside a flowing river with water that was brown as mud.

“She just took the boat with the boy,” the man with the plow informed me and I was a little infuriated at him for not telling me the truth of her being in the house all along.

“Who was the boy that went with him?” I asked.

“He is one among many of her companions,” the man said. “She needs more companion nowadays. At times she had three and at some other time she had seven. Nobody knows exactly but there is no moment that she is alone.”

“How can I reach her?” I asked the man again almost shouting at him.

“You have to ride the boat of course,” the man said in a hushed tone, like he was a murderer running away from his captors.

“How much for a boat,” I pleaded to him and I could feel that time was running out on me and that she might go farther and farther away that I wouldn’t be able to reach her.

“You do not have to pay,” said the man with a crazy grin now pasted on her oily dark skin. He had narrow eyes like he was a Chinese man but his skin is dark as the soil we see on the ground. He continued, “I’ll give you the boat if you agree to swim in that river”. And he pointed towards the area of the river where the water was deeper and the flow of water was continuously moving in a circling motion. As I watch the water more closely, I noticed that alligators started to appear one by one until they dotted the river to the hilt.

Since I was so desperate to find that woman, I agreed to dive into the river and the man brought out a wooden raft from where I would be jumping off. I took a very long pole and started to paddle the raft into the middle of the river. When I reached the point where the water was at its deepest, I closed my eyes and jumped into the river while some people appeared out of nowhere in order to watch me swim in that alligator-infested waters. To my amazement, none of the alligators harmed me as they proceeded to swim away from me and I could even notice some that were biting and wrestling at each other instead of going after me. I felt the coolness of the waters and as I rose from it, I felt so refreshed and invigorated like a newborn child. The middle-aged man offered me a white towel and I hurriedly dried myself. The man said, “The alligators have accepted you as a kindred soul and so therefore, you will gain now the boat that will bring you to her.” I was a little ecstatic but as I tried to board the boat, my wife suddenly appeared in that dream and called upon me. She said to me: “Do not go after that woman! There might be danger. Don’t go now! The waters have dangers!” My wife repeatedly shouted at me and I called back at her and told her in a loud voice as the boat was slowly heading towards the deeper area of the waters, that: “It is in the dream! I have to go after her! The dream said I must find her! I’ll come back soon!”

The wooden boat that the man gave me to ride upon was so large that there were wide spaces between the navigator and me. It was a motorized banca and as we threaded through the snaking contours of the river, I could hear almost nothing except the sound of the motor and the heavy silence of the forest that lies at both side of the flowing river. As we floated along, I could feel the warm breeze hitting my face as I briefly reexamined the journey I had taken just in order to find her. Was it worth it? Is she worth fighting and struggling for? What form of malady that had ensconced upon me that she had taken a clamping hold on my person; a hold so tight that I could not flee from it. Down below, I could feel the river breathing and heaving like a giant monster, carrying me through it while my mind was heavy with worry and anxiety.

The motor of the banca hummed steadily and the humming sound had calmed my early worries and I was almost lulled to sleep. Farther down the river, I soon notice from afar a cornucopia of wooden houses and the navigator said that it was the place where we were heading for. We reached the place and many had come to meet us as if once more, they knew that was I coming at exactly the right time. There was a commotion when finally I asked in a loud voice “Where is she?!!!”. Nobody answered my query but everyone was pointing at each other. I started to plead to them one by one until someone presented to me a woman whom at first I thought was the woman that I was looking for. I examined her features slowly, from head to foot, touching her hair and viewing in close range the color of the irises of her eyes. I said to them, “This is not her. This woman is an impostor! I want to see her!” Someone insisted that the woman they presented to me was really the woman I have come looking for. I stomped my feet and there was even more commotions and everyone seemed to be afraid of me and scurried towards different direction.

Finally, a group of men appeared through a wide entrance and one of them was holding a woman by the arms. My heart stopped a bit and a sudden gush of excitement came into me. I tried to meet the group of men headway but they started to turn away. “I wanted to see her,” I said to them as they tried to get away from me. I insisted in following them and they stopped suddenly, including the woman that they were clutching by the arms. As she turned around, I finally saw her face, a face that I could not forget even for a second and never had forgotten even for a single moment in the past. I had known her so well, even the contours of her face, all the angles right to the minutest of details, the very cleavage of her chin and the very shade of her teeth; even though the last time I saw her was three years ago. Tears flowed from my eyes, tears that came perhaps from so much joy upon seeing her for the first time after a very long while. But later I am to be tearful for the cause of sadness and desperation.

I said to the woman: “You have to go with me. Come with me now.”

The woman shook her head and started crying also and told me that she could not come with me. “You have to come back later,” the woman kept on telling me. “Go away now” she continued. “I could not go with you right now”.

I said “You have to come with me now for there may be no next time for us”. I pleaded to her again and again until the dream was starting to fade away. I was so aware that the dream was fading away as I was being slowly siphoned off into some form of darkness. The dream went away while I was shouting at her, pleading again and again for her to come with me. “Come with me!” were my last words to her as I saw her gradually fading away from me and then I saw her face for the very last time in that dream; ever beautiful and gentle, like a calm sea under a bleeding moon, the way that I had always remembered her.

I woke up suddenly and then soon I realized that I just had a vivid dream once more. I felt some immediate sadness upon waking up for the dream had some kind of an unfinished and gloomy ending. I wanted the dream to continue and so I tried my best to gain sleep but sleep would not come anymore. I went down and prepared myself some black tea and sipped the hot condiment beside the window and I saw the stars in the night and wondered if they are so far away that no man could ever reach them, and wondered out loud if ever I’d be seeing her again.

The Mushroom Clouds

2006-05-20T01:30:00.000+08:00

“I saw mushroom clouds in the sky, so huge and menacing, like a breathing monster that is silently heaving of havoc and mayhem.”

“God blesses those people who make peace.
They will be called his children!”

-- Matthew, chapter: 5, verse: 9

“ Those who believe (in the Quran),
And those who believe in the Jewish (scriptures),
And the Christians and the Sabians-
Any who believe in Allah
And the Last Day,
And work righteousness,
Shall have their reward
With their Lord; on them
Shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”

--The Quran: Surah 2: Al Baqarah: Verse 62.

I saw the symbol of mushroom clouds forming in the sky, mirroring exactly the umbrella-like formation of the resultant smoke coming from a nuclear explosion. I saw them first when I was in Manila, among the visions of angels and flying horses and many other images. Months after, while I was already in my hometown of Zamboanga, the images appeared to me again, about a couple more times. For certain, the message it invoked was insistent that it is among those that are repeatedly relayed to me. We must heed the warning signs so that mankind may be warned of impending catastrophe if the will of the Lord is not attained.

I remember Hiroshima as I gazed towards those humongous umbrellas, just as I recalled them in old black-and-white pictures as the dark clouds rose to the sky and took the daylight out of the horizon.

It is not a time for us to be unmindful to the signs of the times and we must take heed always. Dissensions and isolations creep amongst nations nowadays that we must consider taking further steps for international comity and understanding before mankind would implode by itself -- by its own mischief and excesses -- and thereon thwart and dispel the risk of earthly destruction.

In the international political arena, world leaders are continually faced by the ever-reverberating menace of conflicts and arguments; among these issues is the impending proliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear warfare for that matter. This is beside the admitted threats of weapons of mass destruction that had brought America to its latest war and caused the downfall of Saddam Hussein, a self-styled autocrat who is believed by many to be a major threat to world peace.

Let us not be foolish to think that proliferation of nuclear technology would forever be stifled as we have so far. To regulate it is the hardest thing to do, as the world becomes continually borderless that people and materials could come and go in all geographic partitions without being detected.

Years ago, computer technology was merely the domain of the few developed nations. Now, more than half of the world manufactures and assembles computers. It is not difficult to surmise that nuclear technology could have the same fate as computer technology. Especially now that somewhere beneath international attention, some nations are wickedly salivating to have a grasp of such technology.

The potentialities of this warfare are so attractive. Nuclear power is the best defense against the mischief of neighboring countries with malicious schemes. It is the greatest “balancer of power”, the most effective bluff against enemies. And yet, nuclear warfare is the greatest threat to human existence at present.

Today, nuclear proliferation is regulated with relative effectiveness while admitting that some underground trading is happening. This is mostly due to the efforts made by international bodies, mainly by the United Nations.

Let us not be fooled however by the seemingly stable peace the present world is experiencing. While we indeed desire that peace should be everlasting, we must not let down our guards. We must be continually vigilant against those who seek conflict. This vigilance shall be the crucial sacrifice that we shall make which would include protracted and determined effort to bring more understanding and cooperation among nations and among men of different race and creed; between the East and the West, among Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, between the whites and the colored, between the wealthy and the poor, and among the fortunate and the oppressed.

Let us remember clearly that the peace we have been experiencing at present is merely for a relative short period of time, when we just had the most destructive war fifty years ago in World War II, not to mention the also-destructive World War I in the earlier part of the last century.

If we study and examine human civilization, through thousand of years of human existence, mankind had repeatedly been disturbed by countless wars, huge and small, among many empires and kingdoms. There are the wars that gave rose to the empires-the Persian, the Byzantine, and the Romans among many others-as well as those that brought their downfalls, and wars among neighboring nations. There was the Hundred Years War between France and the Great Britain, there was the war that caused the colonization of nearly half of the world territories, the Crusades by the Europeans against the Arabs, the conquest of Arabs of nations in the name of faith, the North and South War in America, the Vietnam and Korean War, the war between Iraq and Iran, the Baltic Wars, the Gulf war, the war of India against Pakistan---these among many. In the end, we must realize that every war seems to be impending, that every tension may possibly explode and that every conflict may possibly escalate.

Admittedly, international comity and understanding at present help us stave away uncertainties and probable ignitions of war. The establishment of the United Nations is the greatest innovation that man had achieved in recent history for it had allowed nations from all four corners of the world to seek a forum for understanding, for redress and grievances and arbitration of conflicts. Yet, we must not stop at this for we need to promote more understanding and cooperation among peoples and nations especially among people of different religion for it is religious wars that is most menacing. A religious war connotes unimaginable mayhem and havoc. Many men readily kill and die in the name of religion.

International understanding and cooperation among all people is mankind’s greatest weapon and guard against the risk of impending wars. Let us remember always that if we do not seek “oneness of men” as early as now, decades from now, wars may be more virulent and destructive that mankind may implode upon itself and find its own apocalypse.

It is the hope of this author that men should understand that men are equal in the eyes of God. The differences in faith and religion are just circumstantial. For in Arabia people grow dates while in America they grow apples. We could not expect to be the same and yet we could be one.

And further, if every religion seeks righteousness, then let us all be righteous for those who repent and seek the righteous path shall gain eternal life but the wicked who seek the evils of the world---of violence and fornication---shall wallow in eternal punishment in Hell.

In The Middle Of Nowhere

2006-03-07T14:39:00.000+08:00

It was a huge disappointment to find out that although dried fish processing was rampant in our island hometown, there was just too much buyers of the goods that I could not possibly penetrate the cartel in so short a time. Traders from as far up north in Pagadian City, about five hundred miles from Zamboanga, would come and negotiate with the local fishermen and cornered the market there. I was advised that seizing a sufficient amount of the goods would entail some patience and a lengthened stay in the islands. This was an untenable idea for me. The urban man in me would be so hard pressed to slide into the virtual desolation of rural life, to be "the man called Friday" and away from the honking noise and pollution of the city.

While the serenity of the islands provided me a great breather, it was imaginable for me then to succumb into general silence of a rural environment. There would be just too much silence that it would border the deafening.The wide and miles and miles of stretch virginal beaches consoled my frustrations and led my mind away from the profits that I nearly counted already and yet the ones that would not be obtaining, at least not with that trip. We took small boats and scoured the nearby islands. The breezy seascape had regained my trust in nature, quelling every suspicion that nature has finally and absolutely lost its battle against the industrial advancement of humanity.There was this over-stretched patched of sand in the middle of two islands that really caught my amazement. It was not of course very unlikely that such natural accumulation of sand would concur in an area full of shores in the first place; but have you heard of a beach in the middle of the sea? One could not help but surmised that Atlantis might have been similarly situated as that particular beach, once rising to the surface before it got sunk into the pit of the ocean.I walked almost the length of the half-mile patch of the whitest of sand and wondered why nothing grows except some marine plants attached like mildews to rocky corals. I picked some shells and stones and felt somewhat mesmerized that there were sea stones that were embroidered with the most perfect shape of a star. My cousin King told me that they sell well with Japanese tourist, the ones they make into beads. My eyes squinted to examine the stones more forcefully and I almost concluded that God must have some industrial factories up there that stones like those could be sculptured with some design that only machines could afford. The perfect symmetries were there and the lines were straight.I stared upward and the sky was clear of any cloud and it was the kind of place where you could view the entire sky from one end, towards another, at any angle you gained sight. Funny that I felt reassured that in that place, I would not hear the sound of radios, nor the cacophonic slur of television, neither the honks of cars and motorcycles. There was no smell but the salty fragrance of the sea and I was assured that any fumes or dusty accumulations of factories would never ting the air. No matter how trivial was such realization but I could not help appreciating the newfound belief that despite of everything, there is still a place where the hands of urban life, with its many gadgets and equipments and convoluted industrial mazes, could not reach.

FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY "A Prophet's Life"

Two Dreams

2006-02-07T15:29:00.000+08:00

These dreams tell some stories like they are short stories wanting so much to convey some messages. I bet the messages are uplifting, enlightening and joyful all at once.

I had a couple of dreams about two months ago that I thought I should put into writing and recreate the images in my mind, as I have always been doing in the near past. You see, I have this fondness for jotting down the things that happened in my mind while I am asleep because some of these dreams tell some stories like they were a play on their own---as vivid as they were and as intense and exhilarating that I seem to gasp for breath every time I awoke from those dreams.

In the first dream, I saw my long departed friend Aziz in my sleep (he died about three years ago after a long bout with kidney failure) as we walked along the sidewalks of Rizal Avenue, an area just near the city hall and merely a spitting distance from Plaza Pershing, the central park of sorts of Zamboanga City. We were walking down the avenue and another friend, Tony, was with us. In a sudden sort of manner, Tony whispered to me whilst he stooped his head near my ears. “Aziz seems to be leaving. Is he really going away?”, Tony asked me in a very hushed tone. I immediately looked towards Aziz’s direction as he was walking a little bit ahead than us and I saw that he had a bulky belt bag circling his torso like he was carrying a lot of things, enough for days and days away from home. He looked like he really was going away towards some far distant location. I then approached Aziz in order to satiate Tony’s question. “Are you really leaving? I asked Aziz. “Tony said that you looked like you are leaving to some faraway land”, I added. Aziz slowly turned his heads towards me and said, “Yes, I am indeed going to a very faraway place but do not worry the two of you for I have a carried a lot of things with me that it would suffice my long stay there”. He said this while he was pointing to the bulky black bags that was surrounding almost half of his body.

And then the dream got transposed into another scene. The next images that came to me in that sleep was Aziz walking towards a field that was the color of gold, like a wheat fields that we see on American movies set upon urban areas in the United States and there were hills and valleys I see in the distance and the sun rays there were so beautiful that the whole place lighted up my emotions and I felt a little exaltation even as I merely recall it in my waking moments later on. (Days after this dream Tony passed by our place and I recounted to him about the things I have seen this particular dream. I said to Tony that the wheat fields reminded me of the Sting song “Fields of Gold” because the whole of it looked so brilliant like gold. Tony asked me to describe it further and I mentioned to him that if he had seen the movie “Gladiator” the place looked exactly like the fields seen there, where Russell Crowe rode a horse along fields the color of which were golden. Tony said that in Roman mythology, such field is called the Elysian Field---a place where the spirits of those who died go. “Oh, that must be where Aziz went. Towards the Elysian Field”, I half-jokingly muttered to Tony. I later on researched about Elysian Fields and found out that the term is actually derived from Greek mythology, as the place where the spirits of the virtuous and heroic goes---a kind of place that is mostly interrelated with Paradise.

And then there was this dream that occurred about two nights after the dream I have first recounted above. In this other dream, I saw a number of my departed relatives and some old people I know in the past. I saw my grandfather Unih there and my grandmother Dayhana and a number of old and departed aunts. There was that aunt who used to make sugar jams that she sold in the market every morning. They were all playing some kind of card games in houses that seemed to be floating above the air and which were connected to one another by suspended wooden bridges. The people I saw there were so silent, not speaking even a single word although their eyes---as they all looked at me---had seemed to speak to me in a muted language. My grandma particularly had that Mona Lisa smile that conversed with me in a thousand words, as if she meaningfully spoke to me through her heart.

I was so amazed at those floating houses that I wanted to inspect and confirm if nothing really supported those structures from below. I could even feel the whole place moving sideways a little as if the houses respond to strong waves of winds that pass by below. My grandpa showed me the whole area and we went into another house, traipsing thru suspended bridges and in that other house I saw the old Chinese man to whom grandpa use to buy sweepstake tickets down at the market area. I used to go with him when I was just a child. The old Chinese man was smiling at me as if telling me that he knows me and for certain, I should remember him from many years ago. I smiled back at him also.

And then I saw another familiar old man, the one who was our neighbor in Sta. Catalina when I was about nine or ten years old. I could not really remember his name except that we called him by the name “Manong”. As children, we used to go to his place, just at the back of the apartment we were living in and we played with his monkey he kept tied near his kitchen’s doorway by throwing some bits of banana at it. He wasn’t smiling so much like the old Chinese man but I know by the way he looked at me; he was such in a fine condition. Then grandpa showed me more of the place; still without muttering a single word. He led me around as if saying that this is the place where they live now and they are happy there. And then as I went along further, I suddenly realized that the place seemed to be familiar to me that I muttered (now loudly) to my grandpa that “I have been here before but the place looked a little different now”. My grandpa just nodded as if saying that I don’t have to tell him that (about me already having been in that place before) and he just smiled. The last moments of this second dream was me looking into the horizon and I saw the smooth contour of an afternoon sea and although the sunlight then wasn’t very bright (for it looked like night was approaching), the sky was so beautiful to my sight and soothing to my heart that it made me completely happy inside. It was a very soothing place, if ever there is a place like that.

These dreams tell some stories like they are short stories wanting so much to convey some messages. I bet the messages are uplifting, enlightening and joyful all at once.

THE GREAT VISITOR

2006-01-13T14:30:00.000+08:00

“At a glance, the image invoked no particular message, but a mere embrace, a warm welcome. I saw Him, an enigmatic figure.”

I trained my eyes so carefully as I looked for further messages from the angels when all of a sudden, as if my body was lifted above ground for a second or two, as I sat there stuck to my own chair, a bearded man appeared sitting on a huge throne, smiling at me so warmly like a beautiful sunrise as if saying to me ‘See, I have come’.”

My eyes were a little wet and teary-eyed when I saw this most enigmatic of all images. I have seen this man, Jesus Christ sitting on a huge throne, a warm smile on His face, like a warm embrace that almost I felt some trembling on my skin. A cold wind passes me by so suddenly.

It was the most enduring of all images that I have seen from the sky, a bearded man on a very huge throne, lasting for a full minute or so. It was a face so familiar for I have seen that face countless times in the past, in pictures hanging from walls and corridors, on doors and entrances, on the bulletin boards, in churches and offices, and even in public markets; it is the picture of a man so adorned by many. I could never be mistaken, I could never go wrong.

Speaking through my mind and heart, He evoked the personage of enormous Love and Caress-He is indeed the Redeemer of Humankind.

It was an image of great welcome, a stark introduction to His person because right from that moment, I have scoured and read more about Him. The image was a revelation that finally now I am certain that He existed in the past, as we know Him in those bible stories, in books and in televisions, and He will continue to exist. It had led me to search the wisdom of the Gospels, as well as of other writings. He is the Beginning and he is the End. The Alpha and the Omega. For He has been raised towards the Heavens in order to return in the End of days--to be the Judge of All Men, the Witness of God.

And He shall be the visitor that we shall all expect. We shall clean our houses then, to sweep the floor of grime and dust the windows from dirt, to put on the red carpets and prepare the best wares in our dining tables. We shall put on our best garments and make the flowers bloom in the gardens of our front yards. Make the gardens bloom my brothers and sisters for we all shall welcome a great visitor.

We shall be ready with our water of life for if He shall come, we shall prepare Him coffee and tea, and confectioneries of all kind. We shall prepare Him a drink made from the water that we have invested with our good intentions and righteousness. Let our water of life be overflowing, so we may not be lacking if the time comes. Shall we be the bride who uses up the oil in her lamp and not providing light when the time comes?

It came to me finally, that Jesus Christ---the Son of Mary, the Messiah---was the one orchestrating the great stage show that I have been witnessing in the sky, as the angels flew here and there, to invoke messages in beautiful pantomime and exhibiting groups of symbols that completes a thought-so that I may find the answers and write them and relay them to you-to you all who may be righteous and good. It is then for me to serve a purpose, a purpose that is worth trying, to say the least. I would be the servant of God, if He wishes, as each and every one of us could be His servant too. We should find this in our hearts, for nothing is more admirable than this purpose, nothing far greater of a sacrifice.

This is no time to doubt nor a time to while away precious time; it is a time for us to rekindle the flame that burns in our hearts ever since we were born, the faith and belief in the Goodness of God, the rewards of the righteous, the Eternal Life that awaits us. It is a time for us to seek the path of the Light again, and none of the road that has blinded us into evil ways and wickedness. It is a time for our spirits to rise again against the might of the Evil One, as we struggle against the influence of the Darkness, as we live in this present world haunted by men and women slaved to flesh and prone to violence; those that are easy to deceit for in their hearts is unfaith and disbelief.

Now I know the man better. He is Christ, the Anointed One, and the Son of Man. He was the one who said, “ Do not look upon another person with one eye and lust upon that person. For you have committed adultery already”. For He was the one who said, “those who come in peace shall be called the children of God.”

Let us overcome our will against the temptation of the flesh and of wealth for those who shall remain in faith shall reap the rewards of Eternal Life. Let us all be Children of God. Follow my footsteps my brothers and sisters.

For He had come now, not perhaps as the resurrection as He had promised once but perhaps to merely make a stopover, a brief reminder to us before the day of reckoning shall come. In order to ease us our minds, to reassure us that despite our toil against the many temptations that hounds these present days, there is a pot of gold waiting for us at the end of the rainbow. So that we know that after we labor in our faithfulness, we shall be rested in an oasis of love and that we shall be put into good sleep by the lullaby of hope and redemption.

We are the fortunate ones--- this generation is gifted with a vision, a clear sign from the Lord God. We must not remain blind lest we missed out on our chances. There is no other time like this again for all of us. There was a promise made in the days of old and indeed, it is to be fulfilled.

For whom among us shall say that this generation has not been lost into the labyrinth of temptations, for every side we see, we see the might of evil. Shall we not confess our sins? It has been centuries and eons ago that Our Lord Almighty has given us His words, so long ago that not one among us to deny that the flames of faith have somehow mellowed down in our hearts, like a well-kept secret, like a treasure forever lost. It is time then for us to rekindle the Light in our hearts.

And now He has come through my visions to reawaken us from our deep sleep and face a brand new sunrise. We are the lucky ones indeed and we shall never let go of this moment for we may never pass this way again. We must all be one in the righteous path for the promise of Eternal Life is for all mankind. For whomsoever walk in the righteous path shall walk in the Way of the Light. A man may spend all his life in a cave and yet if he is righteous, he had walked in the Way of the Light. And a man may live in the temples all his life and yet if he is wicked in his heart, he had turned away from the Light.

There is a time to live and a time to rest, and a time for everything in between, and yet, this is the time for us to awaken our spirits and wash our soul clean. We must be born again and like a child, we must see the goodness in every man, to expect the brightness of life, and to evade every evil thing.

Let us cleanse our spirits and wash our souls. Let us repent and produce fruits from our repentance. For those who repent may find relief in the arms of the Lord. Let us open our hearts to those who suffer, bring life to those who are sick, to feed those who hunger and bring water to those who thirst. For we have been thirsty ourselves and now He gives us a fountain of life---our water of life.

Let us bathe and drink in this Fountain of Life.

My Book, The Night of Angels

2005-12-28T11:39:00.000+08:00

On 2002, a mystical experience had occured to me while I was in Manila. That was some three years ago. In this book, I have recounted in earnest the magical ride that I was into and then some other meanderings about faith, life and humanity in general.

Click here for the complete online version of THE NIGHT OF ANGELS. For a very limited period only.

What Is Freedom?

2005-12-13T14:38:00.000+08:00

Freedom has gained its own masters and its own set of philosophers-to be defined and classified in so many words and terms-- and yet it remains that men kill and die for their own kind of freedom as against another man’s freedom for the freedom of one may not be the freedom of another. For at times the freedom of one man means the detainment of another.

A slab is a piece of slab. You run your hands through it and you would know very well that it is a piece of slab. You would feel the contour, the roughness or the smoothness of the surfaces.

And then you smell it and to be certain it would have the same wooden aroma of any piece of slab you have ever hold.

But freedom to us is freedom without the sense of sight or the sense of touch. Freedom is never always freedom when it is not susceptible to a very particular sense or meaning, but always floating in the air. You would never smell it nor touch it. You would not be able to see it also.

It is invisible to the eye and what is invisible is always a mystery. It is aside from the forces of our senses, even outside the power of our wills.

Freedom has gained its own masters and its own set of philosophers-to be defined and classified in so many words and terms-- and yet it remains that men kill and die for their own kind of freedom as against another man’s freedom for the freedom of one may not be the freedom of another. For at times the freedom of one man means the detainment of another.

There is that kind of freedom that is harbored by men of ardent philosophies-adventurous and complicated-to reason out that man should be left alone to determine his or her own fate, to be responsible for its own action, to be independent of thought and will, to the extent that they defy not only the norms of man but even the dictates of our God Almighty. Free will had become their sole reason for being and being for them is merely to lavish themselves with the dictates of their instincts-to the most mundane and to the basest. And further on, they trample upon every reason in order to free themselves of natural inhibitions and lavish themselves in improper pleasures of the mind and of the flesh, for they say they should be left alone, for they say man is born free. They are blind to the nature of things.

They are the ones who would travel the ends of the world just in order to unearth every loophole in any man’s law and that of the laws of God. They would scream and shout invectives if they are caught upon for they deify freedom like a religion and their religion is merely their own will and that of no one else. They are like beast in the wilderness that, once caught in their own traps, would gnash with the most ferocity at their captors, frothing in the mouth, unyielding and defiant.

They do not overcome their own will, they let it flow unhindered and spoil their own souls. They open the floodgates of excesses that they do not only become merely excessive but they take pleasure in wicked things. They introduce themselves into conducts nearly bestial and diabolic. They wallow in the flood of lust and violence; truly they are wickedness reborn. They are the descendants of those who were burned in the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and their fate shall be as worse, if not worst. For just they know that man is born free, they let themselves wallow in the muck of wickedness. They soil their bodies and bring death to their own souls.

They are men wanting in faith, lacking the power of the will, and they are not patient. How could they be patient when they do not believe in the Judgment Day and in the promise of Eternal Life in the Hereafter? They have disregarded the forewarning of the Lord, through the prophets and the messengers. They have a universe centered on their selves that primary upon them is the pleasures of the body-they do not overcome their will.

Indeed, man was born free, to be able to have volitions and independence of thought and action. Freedom is the greatest gift of God to man. He is born free so that he would savor with delight the beauty of life here on Earth and yet freedom was not given for man in order that man should defy Him. Freedom is for man to live an eventful sojourn in this temporary world.

Even as a child grows into adulthood, he realizes that he has the power of self-determination, to steer his mind and body towards the ends that he desires. And yet, he also realizes that despite the independence of his will, there are many things that he could not do. He realizes that he is susceptible to many limitations---both seen and unseen. He is hindered by the forces of nature just as when he could not stay dry when a storm pours down on him while he is walking on an open field. He is also hindered by other men, that he could not for example take anything in sight lest his possession be at risk of being taken.

Despite of freedom, he could not be underwater for long less his breathe is sucked out of his breast.

Despite of freedom, he could not lift himself above ground like birds do.

Despite of freedom, he could not spit on another man’s face lest he be at risk of danger.

He could not do violence less he be violated himself. He could not take lest his possession be taken also. He preserves his things. He could not as easily speak against anyone less he be spoken also in the darkest of manner. He could not kill for he would be at risk of death himself.

Man therefore has freedom but he is not free to do all things. There is no freedom absolute.

And yet many deify freedom like a religion. They cry freedom like they were in battle and their lives were on the line. In the name of freedom, they lavish their flesh in strange lust and in violence. It is false freedom that they speak of.

Let us see the man who simply walks the streets and then he meets another man walking towards his direction. For this man, it is freedom for him to just pass by and ignore completely the man he meets. It is freedom for him not to address him nor offer comfort to that other man even if that man would be dying of starvation. There would be no law or ordinance that he would violate. It is also freedom for that walking man to greet the other man, feigning a pleasant façade, to welcome him and give him comfort even if he is at the least of discomfort. There are just a lot of things that the walking man could do in such a situation, a lot of space for freedom.

And yet despite freedom, that walking man could not just spit into the face of the other man for he would invite havoc and mayhem possibly. He could not kick or trample him unless he be trampled himself and kicked towards the ground. It is not freedom for him to shout invectives and insults and accusations lest he be insulted himself.

Men may do many things but there are things they could not do.

The Lord has not been wanting in reminding us towards the proper freedom. We have our own volitions and yet through many prophets and through many messengers, He has guided us with His dictates and commandments in order for us to balance our use of freedom as against wickedness, in order that we may be guided towards the Light and towards the righteous path, the path towards Eternal Life.

Freedom is beauty to mankind and yet its unhindered use is dangerous. It is like upon salt that a pinch shall add taste to the viand but a horde of it shall suffocate the eater.

Would you be the one who is impatient and to wallow in the muck of wickedness and in temporary pleasures, only to lose everlasting peace and blissfulness in the Afterlife?

What would you gain if you gain all the treasures in the world and yet to lose your salvation when death comes calling?

Would you be the rabbit who sought pleasure first and let pass his destination for long?

Or would you be the turtle that labors with every step and be the one to reach destination first?

Do not be impatient and overcome your will against the temptation of wealth and of the flesh for the rewards of the righteous is enormous-an Eternal Life in Heaven-while the punishment for those who defy shall be the torment of the Unending Fire.

The beauty of freedom is for us to savor the beauty of life; to breathe the breezy air; to welcome the warmest of sunrises and sunsets; to bask in the most effervescent of daylight; to be enthralled by the flowers in the garden; to be endeared by the singing of robins in the summertime; in other words, freedom allows us to have a wonderful sojourn in this mortal world as we wait for the next phase of existence, an existence more glorified and gratifying to the soul where righteous man shall gain wings of the widest span in order to roam Paradise and the entire universe.

They say to love is freedom. That freedom is love and that love is freedom.

But a man loves the whole and not merely the superficial. To love is to give and not to ask. It is to love the wholeness of being and not merely the superficiality of things.

To love is to seek the person as a whole and not merely a part of him or her.

To love is never merely to seek the flesh for it is never to love when lust is the primary purpose of adoration--it is an abuse of person. For it is to love to seek the gain of the other and not merely the benefit of the self.

Many seek love in the name of freedom that they result into excesses of the flesh.

They say it is freedom for man to seek the flesh for man is free and so he is free to be blissful. They seek wickedness if they only know this, for man is created apart and above those beasts in the wilderness.

These are men and women who see another person as merely objects; as merely tools and weapons in order to pursue their selfish and improper intentions.

It is not merely a question of what I want but also what others want and ultimately what the Lord Almighty wants.

Let us seek the proper freedom so that we may be guided towards the Light, towards the goodness of things and not to wallow in wickedness.

Those who are excessive shall never sleep tight in the night for their own shadows shall bother them and they always realize these things too late.

Be free and yet be patient.

Philippine Blog Awards Winners

2005-12-09T13:49:00.000+08:00

Finally, the result for this year's much-anticipated Philippine Blog Awards is now out and true to form, the winners truly deserve the honors as well as those who were selected as finalists and semi-finalists. Actually, every blogger out there is already a winner for just having participated in this very veritable endeavor. The people behind the Philippine Blog Awards are worthy of our gratitude for having started this wonderful undertaking for surely, they inspire us all bloggers to always do our best, and even if we do not try as hard, still the Awards is a form of recognition that all of us bloggers should be thankful for. So, I thank the Philippine Blog Awards for the honor of just being included in this yearly contest. By the way, The Daily Prophet gained a 2nd Runner-up finish in the Best Informative Blog Category. My other site Where Now Is The Citizen On Mars? was also a finalist in the said awards.

I also like to congratulate my friend Teacher Sol for almost becoming the Pinoy Blogger of The Year with her A Digital Book. And then there are those who for me are also winners in their own right--- Ms. B.'s Sweet Moments, Jeff's Dubai Chronicles, John Clark's Blog Zone, Gann's Superblessed and Fr. Stephen's Cuying.

Here is the complete list of the winners:

Pinoy Blogger of The Year:
lengthofwords.blogspot.com

Top Three Entries In This Category:
lengthofwords.blogspot.com::
teachersol.blog-city.com::
kulotology.blogspot.com

Best Photo Blog Site:
ironwulf.net

Top Three Entries In This Category:
ironwulf.net::
dubaichronicles.com::
blog.cleevillasor.com

Most Informative Blog:
emeritus.blogspot.com

Top Three Entries In This Category:
emeritus.blogspot.com::
superblessed.blogspot.com::
prophetdaily.blogspot.com

Best Blog Site :
iluv.designlabproject.com

Top Three Entries In This Category:::
iluv.designlabproject.com::
ironwulf.net::
wellwhatever.com

FOR THE COMPLETE LINKS TO THE WINNERS PLEASE VISIT THE PHILIPPINE BLOG AWARDS SITE.

Of Death And Dying

2005-12-05T14:38:00.000+08:00

There was once a particular childhood experience that I have already narrated in my autobiography “A Prophet’s Life” which I intend now to present once more, in a different light perhaps, or in a more elaborate manner. In the past nights, I have been somewhat grasping for topics to jot into this online diary, but inspiration had become farthest to me and I was at a lost on what to inscribe into paper or to be particular, into my computer screen. This must be known to many as a writer’s block, a kind of informal malady of the mind where nothing seems to come out from the writer’s thought mechanism.

I have not believed before in any of the crap they say about a writer’s mind being blocked. But now, I have felt its cruel hands on me. Grasping and feeling like I was in the dark, like into a room without a door and nothing seem to appear except walls and walls of emptiness. Finally now, I have found the door and an idea comes to me blinking like a light bulb.

Death is darkness all over as one falls asleep into the deepest of slumber and what a slumber it was then. Sleep came slowly and had descended on me like a holy dove from the sky. It was a beautiful feeling altogether although I know very well that to many amongst you, death is most terrifying idea of all. It also terrifies me, let me be clear on that but this was how I died and lived again when I was a toddler.

How could I remember such happenstance so far into my past? You might ask this question of course and I am sure whatever explanation I offer, I might come as entirely doubtful. I could anticipate that clearly but this is what really happened.

I was living then with my grandfather Unih when my parents felt so unable to take care of many broods when my other two siblings were finally born that they had to let me stay with grandpa. This was always the reason given to me for being away from my father and mother most of my childhood days but I sense now that the ultimate reason would be the great fondness my grandpa had then on me.

One afternoon, when the weather was dark and cloudy and everything seemed heavy and silent, I was caught by a very high fever and I struggled with it as my head felt the enormous heat that troubled me so much. I could remember fully well how that heat was so unusual for it burnt me like no other and my skin was throbbing and my body was covered with too much perspiration all over. I laid there in bed as my eyes were stuck to viewing the ceiling, so astonished at the peculiar sensation that I was experiencing. My eyes were wide open and I could see quite clearly how my grandfather was so distraught then looking after me, coming in and out of the room, and walking back and forth, washing my head with a wet cloth and then saying prayers above me over and over again, as he held a candle. As the hours went by, other members of the household appeared within my view, trying perhaps to assist my grandpa in battling the high fever that troubled me then. My uncle kept on saying something to my grandpa but I could not remember what were those things. All throughout, I could see the very worried face of my grandpa and to tell you quite clearly, after that incident, I have not seen him as worried as that day, not even for once.

Soon, more and more faces appeared in the scene as neighbors from just next-door started to surface. Somebody suggested that I was to be brought to the main living room of the apartment, in order that I get more ventilation. As my grandpa carried me, I suddenly lost consciousness although it was peculiar that in the darkness of my consciousness, I felt how it was so pleasant and refreshing to be carried in a man’s arm, like I was floating above ground. The next images I had was like in a dream, although it could not have been a dream for the occurrence was so lifelike and real that I could not be mistaken.

I found myself in darkness like in a cavern without daylight coming in. Then I heard some rumbling sounds around me like thunder when suddenly my body was lunged upward and the velocity was so high that I soared like a rocket. This feeling of being lunge into the heights always comes back as a sort of déjà vu whenever I ride carnival contraptions like a Ferris wheel or the caterpillar. It felt like I was a human bullet fired from very huge cannon. As I soared steadily through the tunnel, a light from above came nearer and nearer until I exploded into the clouds and my body floated like a balloon in the great wide-open sky. I was so surprised to see myself among the clouds and I felt so alone as I could see nothing except columns and columns of clouds. Yet despite this aloneness, a certain joy had enveloped me that I could not explain it quite so descriptively except that it was a feeling of an enormous high and happiness that tears flowed from my eyes. I felt like I was doused by a pail of icy water. In my ears was a beautiful sound, music that was so sublime. It came probably from a string instrument---a guitar or a banjo---but I could not point out from where it came, like it was above me and below me all at the same time.

I floated and floated until I was already flying through the clouds, the giant clouds seemingly like giant cliffs of the Grand Canyon, and the lower clouds looked like spreading hills and valleys.

As I was flying, I could see the ground below me and the trees and houses were too small to my eyes. Then I made an abrupt turn to the right side of the sky and found myself inside the clouds. The clouds were so white and often thin as smoke. From afar, these clouds look firm and solid, but when you are close by, they are fleeting just like the air we breathe.

One by one, the angels appeared and reappeared from somewhere from the clouds. One angel just popped out in front of me, smiling and gleeful like he was an old friend. And then he just disappeared, only to reappear somewhere farther. They seem to be playing around with me, like that in a hide and seek. That one angel that came so near me, I could remember so well. He had dark blond hair, not to yellow but a little darker and his skin were a little pale, like a shade of white. His wings fluttered like that of a giant bird and overall, he reminds me of David, the biblical king. You might ask if I had seen David before that I could say he reminded me of that angel. I do not know but every time King David comes into my mind, whenever for example I am reading passages from the bible, I always had a concept of how David probably looked like, blond, tall and body built with well-formed muscles that he might have had the perfect human body, the epitome of manhood.

When the angels refrained from appearing, my body floated towards a wide area where the clouds became more rare and harder to come by and then from afar, I saw some red images that caught my attention in a snap. I slowly approached the area where the image was. As the image came closer and closer, I could see that it was a white castle with red flags flowing from its pointed turrets. At that age, I have not yet learned how to read and haven’t yet seen any figure of castles from most fairy tale books that I eventually had when I was an older child. That was my first view of a castle.

Before I reached the place where the castle was, I suddenly woke up and realized that my body was laid on the table in the middle of the living room and my grandpa was staring at me while he was right above me. I could see the faces of my uncle and my aunt, as well as that of a mustachioed neighbor who had said to my grandpa “See, he is going to wake up as I told you”. I could see that my grandpa was perspiring and he was crying with tears flowing from his eyes. That was the only moment that I have seen him cry and not ever.

Until now, that particular memory is etched in my mind like it just happened yesterday. I could not forget it and I could not be mistaken. That was how I had a glimpse of the afterlife when I was a child of about three or four years old.