MINIATURES

He lived and died with his contradictions. Even his novels abound with this clash or perhaps this duality of a restorer and a destroyer. I find Ibarra naïve at the same time I do admit that I am awed by the character of Simoun the jeweler, to the point of wishing that the bomb plot in the house of old Kapitan Tiago had succeeded. But then I am treading upon fiction. I must say, that is a masterstroke , he directed his life the way he wanted it to be, and yet I also asked now; Did he for a moment, lost control during his trial? The manifesto he wanted to issue, the denial of his involvement, etc. Meanwhile, as he denies and condemns, members of his own family were long ago privy to the separatist movement. Still, can we say that he had no knowledge? The letters he wrote his friend Blumentritt, consequently reveal his self study approach, to “Germanistik”- indeed one of his many faces as a seducer, to quoting Heine, Schiller, and Goethe. Equally at ease with the French romanticists...

   In my postulates about fates and destinies, I have come with naive intentions and by chance to the literary void of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The heaven he created seems to be unrealistic, and yet the hell he speaks of, I tend to believe, as if I smile now with a sinister air to warn that, "It exists!" I recall once; the neighborhood was alarmed with the smell of sulfur and coconut oil. With my mother telling my older siblings, "Azufre!" Leaving my brother (whose favorite movie is "The Exorcist"), shouting in nightmarish glee: "The vapors of hell!. It turns out someone was only heating a concoction of sulfur powder and coconut oil, believed to be a cure to that dreaded skin disease we know as "kurikong." In some libraries in my teenage years, I followed my seemingly insatiable curiosity about Dante's sulfuric vapors and the realities of his "Inferno." I began to imagine the destinies of people like the hated professors.-...

Sa dulo ng ilog Pasig, sa paglapit sa boca ng Laguna de Bay, di kalayuan sa Napindan, makikita noon ang isang pook na tinawag na "Hagdang Bato". Nakilala ito sa ganitong tawag sa dahilan na ang malalaking bato sa pampang ng ilog ay nagsisilbing hagdanan ng mga taong umaahon sa nasabing ilog at ito din ginagawang daungan ng mga casco, pituya at maliliit na bangkang gamit sa pangingisda o  panunuso.  Sa paglapit sa hagdang bato mapapansin din ang isang lugar na punong puno ng kawayanan, mga punong kahoy at magagandang halaman. Kilala ito sa luntian nitong kulay, sa tahimik at maginhawang kapaligiran. Sa loob ng nasabing pook ay may isang payak na bahay kubo. Dito pumipisan ang sinasabing tagapangalaga ng mga puno at mga halaman ng hagdang bato-- Isang matandang babae na wala namang makapagsabi kung ano ang ngalan at saan nanggaling. Sinasabi rin tuwing umaga nakikita ang matanda sa hagdang bato naglilinis at tinatangal ang mga lumot  sa mga baitang na sa gayun paraan ay mak...

My companion during the long weekend -- This coffee table book talks about the meaning of the word "bridge" to different cultures and societies. The physical and the metaphoric. How are bridges designed?  How do we create those unseen bridges of our lives? Romans built aqueducts bridging water to their people. With water passing on top of it not bel ow. Or the jargon that often implies to crossing it, overcoming something.  In Chinese art and literature, there are many descriptions of bittersweet partings at a bridge. Then there is this Japanese haiku I have read about unknown bridges, the haiku of chance.

One of the early contacts Ferdinand Blumentritt had with Filipinos in Spain was with the propagandist Graciano Lopez Jaena. In a letter dated 26 June 1888 to German Philology professor Hugo Schuchardt, Blumentritt mentioned his correspondence with Jaena and described the Ilonggo patriot: "Jaena often leaves a long wait for an answer. He is also very vain and easy to hurt. Like most Indios, they always believe that one wants to mock or humiliate them..... They are extraordinarily good, amiable, and noble. I now understand why the Europeans talk so badly about them. The Indios are shutting up before them because they always believe the whites want to make fun of them. I am writing this to you so that you can provide your respectable letter for a brief introduction about the purpose of your creole studies. The effort will be worth it. Believe me, I am supposed to be an Indio, and I am their brother and friend." This part of the letter gives us the mind of Blumentritt when dealin...

                                                La Bête Humaine by Juan Luna           The book held by the beautiful lady commands more attention than herself. It is the novel of Emile Zola, La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast), part of a series or a cycle of stories chronicling the lives of two families Rougon-Macquart as they march to events in French history. La Bête Humaine  has this intriguing reputation for it deals with subjects such as displaced sexuality and the psychotic tendencies of man.  The plot involves a character named Jacques Lantier, who has an inborn madness, that hereditary trait to kill, ergo he is the human beast in the novel. Themes of sexuality in psychoanalysis come as Lantier also has to deal with his erotic attraction to an object, of all things, the train engine he drives. All these themes of mad...

Fr. Jose Burgos (1837-1872) P erhaps, it was his "kastila" features, his creole background, and not counting even his intellectual gifts, that led to his undoing. Spain of 19th Century mistrusted so much her sons born in the colonies. The experience Spain had in the Americas, with this great wave of new thinking brought by the Enlightenment which resulted to revolution and subsequent ind ependence of many of her colonies, had made her weary if not too cautious of this criollos and mestizos, that sector she at first relied so much on spreading "Pax Hispanica".  With Burgos, Spain saw the events in Mexico reverberating. Burgos was another potential Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the Mexican clergy who led the "Grito de Dolores' -the Mexican Cry of Independence and like Fr. Hidalgo, Burgos championed the cause of the native clergy. The pamphlets and writings Burgos spread were like papers for bonfires that potentially could burn the colonial authoriti...