Waking Up - 4 July 2006

“Paalsin na ang mga pusang iyan!,” I muttered to myself this morning. The neighborhood cats were at it again. Just as the daily news always report the death or abduction of activists in alarming regularity, the cats never fail to mess with the trash left the night before. Now I have to sweep the apartment’s front and clear the scattered litter lest the feisty woman next door who always keeps her part of the shared driveway spic and span (while stowing her trash in our section) finally have something to say. This has been my daily morning ritual and it sets the general tone of my everyday existence as a struggling lower-middle class professional barely able to afford a lifestyle I foolishly maintain. I mean, aside from being bothered by cats, the month’s rent is already due and my check has not cleared yet. And don’t get me started. There are also debts big and small, life plans that never get off the ground, and still, after all these years, a general uncertainty about my “future”. The only thing I am sure about is the continuous expansion of my girth. All these, taken together, make my morning coffee taste even bitter than it should. Of course, this could be due to the onset of hereditary diabetes (I googled it you know, search => bitter taste in the mouth). Sometimes, I wonder why I even bothered making that cup or why wake up at all.

So here it is, the ranting of a self-indulgent fatso ready to inflict upon the world my middle class sense of dissatisfaction about everything and everyone around me. I am ready to fire away and tell you about my existentialist problems regarding how, to my own purposive sampling, very few people actually deserve the air they breathe or why sometimes, after listening to Sigur Ros (erased, pretentious alert!), it makes breathing a little more worthwhile. These, despite my knowledge of the M & M’s (I meant MLMs, Marxism-Leninism-Mac ism! Ooh, so pomo). But I won’t.

It was something that my wife said that compelled me to suspend all my mundane concerns and take a step back to assess matters in the light of the events that are taking place around me. If there is any truth to the tenets of Sociology, then this might as well be about all of us who have the unfortunate fate of being born into this hell-hole of a country.

Just a few minutes ago, we were capping our day with those small conversations partners have before they sleep in order to take stock of the day’s events. You see, Karen Empeno, was her student in Sociology in UP-Diliman. It has been more than week since Karen, together with Sherlyn Cadapan, both UP students, and Manuel Merino, a farmer, were abducted by armed men. They were working as volunteers for farmers’ organizations in Bulacan. They have not been heard of since then. This afternoon, Karen’s parents visited the campus to solicit support from faculty and students and my wife had to accompany them. In our bedtime conversation while the evening news was blaring in the background, my wife spoke about how Karen’s parents handled themselves with a quiet dignity as they talked to university officials, faculty, staff and students. They are of simple origins from Bataan, the mother – a public school teacher and the father a retired bank employee. Sarah suddenly fell silent and I thought she must have been thinking about how Karen’s parents were feeling. I asked her what she was thinking about, and replied that she was wondering what was happening to Karen that moment. I fell silent too and watched her as she dozed to sleep in a record time of 5 seconds. I adore her in this sense. She would just twist her body with a rocking motion and she’s off to lala land. Usually, this is my cue to get my focus back to the news but this time around, I stared at her longer and was plunged in a moment of reverie. I pursued Sarah’s last thoughts before she fell asleep and began wondering what could be happening to Karen right now?

It was a chilling thought alright. Images of men, swinging light bulbs, cigarettes and broken bottles. Shrieking sounds and shouting then of deathly silence as young, frail, and mangled bodies try to recover from the ordeal. These animals are testing if their flesh and bones are as strong as their principles. These harrowing images are not new and unusual and I wish Karen and her friends are spared from such pain. But you cannot reason with madness. One can perhaps say that the blood of the young has written the narrative of this nation in the many military camps and safe houses across the decades. And if my fears are correct, Karen joins those who have given more for this country than the rest of us.

Karen was a student of Sociology in UP who thought that the promise of the discipline lie in serving the interests of the country’s poor. While gathering data for her undergraduate thesis, she volunteered for a farmer’s organization. Like many of us who have passed through the portals of the University, she has taken to heart our credo as Scholars of the People. The townspeople identify the military as the people who took her and companions. Her idealism and academic pursuit has been met by an irrational madness of Gloria’s private army.

Its already 3 am and my wife is twisting and turning in her sleep. I figured she is having nightmares. I am not surprised. This world is cruel to those who dream. Tonight, when I finally call it a day, I will hold my wife tight and remember the quiet heroism and sacrifices of the likes of Karen and Sherlyn, and Manuel. Wherever they are, I wish that they know that, this very moment, a whole army of dreamers is restlessly sleeping. Soon they will wake up.

In the meanwhile, I expect to see the trash once again scattered tomorrow morning by the scavenging neighborhood cats. But I won’t mind them that much. In fact, I might even throw them a bone or something (fish bone ba). After all, they are the least of my concerns. Because above the din of inanities that clutter my daily life, beyond my preoccupation with the mundane and the personal, is a conviction that is shared by many more like you who are waking up. We are putting the blame squarely on the one who is tearing this country apart just to keep herself in power. And we have a collective shout: “Patalsikin si Glora!”