Somewhere in the city, someone has to brave the callous deed of selling flesh and soul during the most unholy hours of the night. For men who have deprived themselves of morality or have endured a long dry spell, her meat is perfectly consumable, quenching the patrons' thirst as water is to mouth. To excite the libido and senses of her midnight riders and to satisfy their phallic ecstasy thereafter is to live for another day. She is free but the oppression that she has to swallow, literally if not figuratively, binds her to a mesh where escape is anywhere near impossible. You call her a whore and she calls men names that can sanctify even the least honorable of all mortals. Aware that the future awaiting her flickers like candle fire in the middle of a raging storm, her free will is as impotent as those who have tasted her skin firsthand. Not surprisingly, her hope grows more elusive today than yesterday and the days that went before.
Somewhere in the province, harvest season signals yet another time when there is dire want amid the plentiful bounties that flood the amber fields. Between months of toil and excruciating days of tending the crops, rest becomes an expensive commodity for those who labor at the mercy of their land owners and of the requisites of having to live a life among the lowly. They do not own the land that they till. If they do, someone who wields the scythe of power strips them off of their rightful claim, as if divorcing them entirely from the umbilical cord that has sustained their generation and the generations that came before them for countless decades. If they stand against the way of those who desire to own their little remaining parcels of land, the risks to life morph before their eyes like an unmistakable death prophet, staring them down while brandishing a crescent that wounds before it even dares to touch their very skinny skins. In these modern times, farmers who fight for their ways of living are by all means looking through the barrel of a warm gun.
Somewhere in a financial district, someone speaks an accent so foreign that others may find it difficult to understand how someone is a Filipino. Someone whose nocturnal lifestyle is a penitence for dreaming the dream eyes the horizon lines from the heights of a concrete tower, one that dwarfs the rest of the corporate neighborhood. With sleepy eyes, coffee on one hand and phone on the other, every call rings that fairly familiar tone of opportunity but not without facing ridicule, mockery, shame and all things that tend to dissolve human dignity with the strike of a word from the other end of the line. The promise of sudden wealth, though not in extremely gracious amounts, is alluring that some others are even tempted to seize that golden opportunity despite having totally alien undergraduate degrees. Some others, enthralled and enticed, simply fade from school to join the ranks and files of these "unseen" voices.
Somewhere, some students are eager to become nurses, so much so that they tend to gravitate towards any short and convenient route possible. The exponential growth in numbers of those who aspire to become nurses is testament to the idea, if not a fact, that the profession is quite rewarding. Green pastures abroad are fertile grounds for nurses to thrive. With a steady demand for health care workers on foreign shores, at least for now, the exodus of our nurses is nothing short of reminding us that ours is a country close to becoming barren—assuming we're not already there. It tells the story of how much some of us have gone to great lengths just to keep afloat in these troubling times. The thought is a boon much as it is a bane. It makes you want to laugh on one side of your face as much as it makes you want to cry on the other. It makes you want to rejoice as much as it compels you to grieve at the same time. It drives you mad while it forces you to remain inspired, clinging on to the sharp edges of hope no matter how tormenting the pain amplifies. You want to become a nurse and pack your bags, traveling to a distant land where you hope that the remittances you send back are enough signs of life for the ones you have left behind.
Somewhere along the banks of a decaying river, a shack stands proudly and defiantly. Inside its tattered walls and roof of wood and plastic, a family prepares for an anorexic supper. The limbs of the children look as though they have seen better days, like thin and lifeless twigs just waiting for gravity to thrust them to the ground. The father is sickly and so is the mother, but there can be no sane excuse for them to let a day pass without finding a way to earn a decent living. One man's garbage is another man's gold; they scavenge an Everest of debris and rubbish in the hopes of unearthing a precious find. His steadfast will is unshaken by the sheer weight of feeding eight mouths all at one time while her unbending determination to live through thin and thin, or thinner and thinnest, is untroubled by the daunting task of making sure that their children will survive at the least.
Somewhere along the banks of the same river, a swine oils herself with the fat of the people. The grease casts an ominous luster, foreboding dangers far greater than what the crippled and afflicted have seen in years. With the swipe of her pen, she can turn the tides to her favor. Conscripting a legion of men and women under her banner with the least amount of force, her sty becomes a fortress to be reckoned with. Along with her minions, she stuffs her cabals' mouths with treasures so they speak not, fills their ears with earthly wonders so they hear not, and blinds their eyes with the shimmer of gold so they see not. All these for the sake of her self-preservation, the lust for political power notwithstanding. She can, she did, she does, and she will do so as she pleases.
Somewhere in this country, laws are made not because of the crimes. Rather, crimes are committed because of the law, or the lack thereof. Representation is given whole new meanings, none of which are devoid of corrupt principles. Those who swore to uphold the law and live them are the first ones to swiftly break their creations. They tremble not at the sight of justice; they rejoice triumphantly at the signs of monumental injustice. They presume themselves to speak of the truth while, in the same breath, they lie straightly through the crevices of their teeth. They appear at the height of the exercise of the people's right to suffrage and disappear into oblivion thereafter, leaving little trace behind only to reappear when destiny in the form of certificate of having been elected into office summons their names. They change partners, marital or otherwise, more than they change clothes, some more than others. They contrive and connive, ever willing as they are to abuse the loopholes of the laws that hold together an archipelago, one that still and always remains on the brink of imploding from its own excesses.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was not fooling around when he said that "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". We are not as independent as we think we are. We are not as free as we presume ourselves to be. Escape from the woes in and of this country can only take you as far as your chains permit. We want to celebrate our independence, or what we think is a close semblance to it? By all means let us do so, but let us do so to the fullest extent if only to remind us that freedom in chains is no freedom at all. We can voice opposition against a tyrannical rule and ruler, but the forces of poverty and indecency throw us aback the moment we realize that the liberty that we know is far detached from what it truly is. We can raise our fists and shout in huge defiance against those who belittle the democracy, but the forces of politics and hunger in both body and soul drive us back to square one with every effort we make towards the culmination of our desires as a nation. We can strike with unprecedented force and push back the weight of those who con-ass themselves to cosmic levels, but we tend to lose our momentum and consistency the time we come to realize that the struggle of living in this wretched part of the Earth is already a hefty burden in itself.
And we call ourselves free?
Somewhere in the province, harvest season signals yet another time when there is dire want amid the plentiful bounties that flood the amber fields. Between months of toil and excruciating days of tending the crops, rest becomes an expensive commodity for those who labor at the mercy of their land owners and of the requisites of having to live a life among the lowly. They do not own the land that they till. If they do, someone who wields the scythe of power strips them off of their rightful claim, as if divorcing them entirely from the umbilical cord that has sustained their generation and the generations that came before them for countless decades. If they stand against the way of those who desire to own their little remaining parcels of land, the risks to life morph before their eyes like an unmistakable death prophet, staring them down while brandishing a crescent that wounds before it even dares to touch their very skinny skins. In these modern times, farmers who fight for their ways of living are by all means looking through the barrel of a warm gun.
Somewhere in a financial district, someone speaks an accent so foreign that others may find it difficult to understand how someone is a Filipino. Someone whose nocturnal lifestyle is a penitence for dreaming the dream eyes the horizon lines from the heights of a concrete tower, one that dwarfs the rest of the corporate neighborhood. With sleepy eyes, coffee on one hand and phone on the other, every call rings that fairly familiar tone of opportunity but not without facing ridicule, mockery, shame and all things that tend to dissolve human dignity with the strike of a word from the other end of the line. The promise of sudden wealth, though not in extremely gracious amounts, is alluring that some others are even tempted to seize that golden opportunity despite having totally alien undergraduate degrees. Some others, enthralled and enticed, simply fade from school to join the ranks and files of these "unseen" voices.
Somewhere, some students are eager to become nurses, so much so that they tend to gravitate towards any short and convenient route possible. The exponential growth in numbers of those who aspire to become nurses is testament to the idea, if not a fact, that the profession is quite rewarding. Green pastures abroad are fertile grounds for nurses to thrive. With a steady demand for health care workers on foreign shores, at least for now, the exodus of our nurses is nothing short of reminding us that ours is a country close to becoming barren—assuming we're not already there. It tells the story of how much some of us have gone to great lengths just to keep afloat in these troubling times. The thought is a boon much as it is a bane. It makes you want to laugh on one side of your face as much as it makes you want to cry on the other. It makes you want to rejoice as much as it compels you to grieve at the same time. It drives you mad while it forces you to remain inspired, clinging on to the sharp edges of hope no matter how tormenting the pain amplifies. You want to become a nurse and pack your bags, traveling to a distant land where you hope that the remittances you send back are enough signs of life for the ones you have left behind.
Somewhere along the banks of a decaying river, a shack stands proudly and defiantly. Inside its tattered walls and roof of wood and plastic, a family prepares for an anorexic supper. The limbs of the children look as though they have seen better days, like thin and lifeless twigs just waiting for gravity to thrust them to the ground. The father is sickly and so is the mother, but there can be no sane excuse for them to let a day pass without finding a way to earn a decent living. One man's garbage is another man's gold; they scavenge an Everest of debris and rubbish in the hopes of unearthing a precious find. His steadfast will is unshaken by the sheer weight of feeding eight mouths all at one time while her unbending determination to live through thin and thin, or thinner and thinnest, is untroubled by the daunting task of making sure that their children will survive at the least.
Somewhere along the banks of the same river, a swine oils herself with the fat of the people. The grease casts an ominous luster, foreboding dangers far greater than what the crippled and afflicted have seen in years. With the swipe of her pen, she can turn the tides to her favor. Conscripting a legion of men and women under her banner with the least amount of force, her sty becomes a fortress to be reckoned with. Along with her minions, she stuffs her cabals' mouths with treasures so they speak not, fills their ears with earthly wonders so they hear not, and blinds their eyes with the shimmer of gold so they see not. All these for the sake of her self-preservation, the lust for political power notwithstanding. She can, she did, she does, and she will do so as she pleases.
Somewhere in this country, laws are made not because of the crimes. Rather, crimes are committed because of the law, or the lack thereof. Representation is given whole new meanings, none of which are devoid of corrupt principles. Those who swore to uphold the law and live them are the first ones to swiftly break their creations. They tremble not at the sight of justice; they rejoice triumphantly at the signs of monumental injustice. They presume themselves to speak of the truth while, in the same breath, they lie straightly through the crevices of their teeth. They appear at the height of the exercise of the people's right to suffrage and disappear into oblivion thereafter, leaving little trace behind only to reappear when destiny in the form of certificate of having been elected into office summons their names. They change partners, marital or otherwise, more than they change clothes, some more than others. They contrive and connive, ever willing as they are to abuse the loopholes of the laws that hold together an archipelago, one that still and always remains on the brink of imploding from its own excesses.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was not fooling around when he said that "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". We are not as independent as we think we are. We are not as free as we presume ourselves to be. Escape from the woes in and of this country can only take you as far as your chains permit. We want to celebrate our independence, or what we think is a close semblance to it? By all means let us do so, but let us do so to the fullest extent if only to remind us that freedom in chains is no freedom at all. We can voice opposition against a tyrannical rule and ruler, but the forces of poverty and indecency throw us aback the moment we realize that the liberty that we know is far detached from what it truly is. We can raise our fists and shout in huge defiance against those who belittle the democracy, but the forces of politics and hunger in both body and soul drive us back to square one with every effort we make towards the culmination of our desires as a nation. We can strike with unprecedented force and push back the weight of those who con-ass themselves to cosmic levels, but we tend to lose our momentum and consistency the time we come to realize that the struggle of living in this wretched part of the Earth is already a hefty burden in itself.
And we call ourselves free?
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