The Gentle Rain

     AS I’m writing this it is raining outside. The kind that gently patters on the roof reminding me of my childhood days in the village south of Albuera town.  We used to huddle with friends in my grandmother’s house across the street watching the gravel dirt road fill its puddles into pools while listening to radio “dramas” such as “Handumanan sa Usa ka Awit”. Our pulses would throb with anticipation greeting the program’s signature music as the “announcer” reads the sender’s life story in letter form with unforgettable feeling and pathos.

       I am also conscious that a friend and elementary classmate of mine from the village died last week and will be buried tomorrow, leaving behind a young family of seven children, the eldest having just graduated from high school. He was Rosalito, a dark-skinned man with slightly stocky build from our village’s fishing sitio called Cabatuan. I remember him coming from that place ever since elementary days and it was also there where he grew up, got married and died. During those times especially after typhoons, we would sneak out with friends and go to sea to “collect” washed up but “usable” plastic debris and toys. I always asked where those things - some faded flowers, tumblers and toys- scattered ashore came from and wondered if they were from sunken ships.

      After grade 3, my parents decided to transfer my studies to Ormoc. From that time on I seldom saw or heard from elementary chums in the barrio. I heard some went to Manila— one was said to have worked as domestic helper of the Enrile household while another one, the girl with the brightest eyes of them all in elementary, with the possible exception of her twin sister, died of pimple infection. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether these were just myths or truth. We hear all sorts of stories—some tall tales—once in a while from friends in the barrio.

      I was already a lawyer when Rosalito started seeing me again, sometimes in our house or in the office in the city. He would bring fresh catch from his fishing trips and would tell me stories about his growing children and how his “poverty” prevented him from buying them even a dictionary. According to him his children were honor students back home. I accompanied him to Mancao bookstore where we bought a medium size dictionary. He told me other things as well, but what stuck in my mind to this day was his unflinching, unusually intense concern towards his children’s formal education. My mother who used to teach in our place told me Rosalito always managed to find ways to pay the “amutans” and equip his kids with required school paraphernalia. He also made sure his kids attended school with clean though simple clothes. Who knew if he was hounded with premonition that soon he would go in his sleep and not wake up? And this, before his kids could finish  school.

     I did not realize how difficult life was for Rosalito, his wife and children until the day I visited their place when news reached me of his death. His house was small and spare with no modern conveniences, the ones most of us take for granted. It was said he put off buying things since “all” his earnings from subsistence fishing went to his children’s upkeep and education. Understandably he was concerned he might not be able to send off his eldest son for college education. He told me he planned to enrol him to VISCA for a two-year course. The cut out picture displayed on his coffin was when he went on stage to accompany his boy receiving honors from school. How happy he must be that time, I thought to myself, though he didn’t smile in the picture. I myself have never attended closing or graduation ceremonies of my children and honestly I have reasons to envy this man who took time out to be with his kids during their school recognitions. I noticed my friend was wearing T-shirt in his death. I regretted asking his wife if they could have found a barong. I realized his white T-shirt, simple in its quiet dignity was the best he could wear under the circumstances. It had some prints with a quotation: “Life is a basketball, the more you dribble the more you fumble. But if you hold the ball firmly and determine to shoot, it will surely hit the goal”.

    Estrella D. Alfon wrote a story entitled the Gentle Rain first published in the Sunday Tribune Magazine in January 1937, where we find this: “See it commences to rain. They say when it rains just when somebody has died, it means that the dead one did not yet want to leave this world. Is not life like the gentle rain? The gentle rain that overflows the river and that washes away its banks. The gentle rain from which springs so many forms of life, and through which as many others are destroyed”. Just like Maring in the short story, my friend never mentioned any sadness. Only being happy and wanting to be happy, although in his case I know for one how he already gave all his happiness—to his children.

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au

15 June 2012

amutan – contribution

handumanan sa usa ka awit – remembrance from a song

Si Dodong Namarayeg Ug Donut

Si dodong namarayeg ug donut
Gihatud ni tatay sa terminal,
Nangadlawon nga  maabtan ang “first trip”
Kay mag test kuno.

“Hala pilia nga dili gutman sapagtungha”
“Duha ka donut’ tay, tagsa ta”
“Hutda nang tanan, dong”
“Mikoot si tatay sa katapusang kuwarta
Gisuklian sa iyang paniudto.

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au
Sydney 15 June 2012

Remembering my Father

    Today is my father’s birthday. Born on April 9, 1933, Dominador Tumamak Tabucanon would have been 79 years old had his life not ended 30 years ago. He was a remarkable man. I miss him more than I could express. I wish I could write a longer piece about him, maybe someday. For now, its just scribbled tidbits on the life and times of the man. If you have recollections of him, would be happy to know.

    There are three things I would like to say about Papa: 1) much like many Filipino parents he made sure we got good education, 2) how he dealt with his fellow men, and 3) love for family, both his nuclear and larger family.

1. Education. Papa was a stickler for academic propriety and excellence. He corrected my use of "trucking" to refer to buses that passengers use in going to Manila: " 'Trucking' is for cargoes, not people."Yes, people and things are not the same. He also made sure that we read, andbought books for us. He was himself a well-informed person who regularly read papers and the Reader's Digest. His long-standing rule in the house was those who read do not do house work. I took advantange of this "law", that up to this day I do not know how to cook! I guess, every good law has its downside. Papa's education was anchored on loyalty. Many may not agree, but in my case it worked. For instance, he insisted I (and Vilma) do my high school at Western for he studied there, and it worked forhim (e.g. he became a lawyer). Logically, this is incorrect. What was good forhim, may not suit his children. Its like saying I went to this mountain school barefoot, you do the same. Yet Papa's insistence on my sticking it out with Western paid off for when the school opened its law school they took me in as dean. That's loyalty and Papa's foresight in action.

2. Fellow men. Papa had an exceptionally high social intelligence.This did not always sit well with Mama who wanted a quieter and more domesticatedhousehold. During Papa’s time ours was an open house. The trip from Ormoc toTinag-an was an odyssey of sorts by stopping by, drinking, eating and talking with his clients and friends. I developed some kind of social phobia after theexperience. Yet, if there was one thing Papa cannot be faulted, it was hisability to connect with people: people of all shapes and sizes, denomination,  persuasion, sexual orientation and economic standing. He was one of the few individuals I know who does not know how to discriminate. He was loved by the people in return. His love was universal and cosmopolitan. When TV was new in the villageand some households charged fees for a view, he said our TV should be free; sowith the beach house in Tinag-an.  He said that should be for free use by the community.

3. Family. Papa loved his family, his wife, children, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, and cousins galore. It was a love that radiated through and through, and I don’t know how he did it but he seemed to have memorized the names of each and every cousin of his including their spouses, children and grandchildren. My shy and private nature is but a speck of that genius of knowing one's exact family interconnections to the dot. He does not distinguish between blood cousins and cousins by virtue of his marriage. When Dodok, who was Mama’s first cousin had Aplastic Anemia, Papa spearheaded the line up of blood donors and offered him  a room in Ormoc (had it painted and screened). Papa was loved by his larger family in return. He treasured gifts and made sure we knew who gave what to him: his law books, office table (the one with DTT initials that looked like they were bullet holes), and cabinet were given. He treasured the Samsonite bag given by his sisters, and was proud of the dollar check gifts he received from his family in America which he would divide among us, his children, by ratio and proportion according to age. And that suited me, being the eldest, but then I did not choose to be born first.

    All in all, Papa’s was a life well lived. He was a good man, and a kind man, to his family and the community.  I am happy to have met and interacted with him, enough to recollect some of the many good things he did. For my part, I have dedicated some of my important life works and projects in his name and memory.

    Papa, I hope wherever you are that you are happy:  All your children have married and they have their own children now. Life goes on. You have not failed us: you were a good father and person to all of us.

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au

Sydney 9 April 2012

Why ASEAN is duty bound to help climate change-affected Pacific populations

    The effects of climate change are now being felt in various regions of the world. Scientists have documented rising levels of sea and air temperatures. While hurricanes and floods are experienced in one region, droughts and disruption to rainfall are felt in another. In the polar regions there is the melting of glaciers and ice caps.The Pacific region with its low-elevation island nations dispersed in a vast ocean setting makes it particularly vulnerable to challenges from the physical environment. The region is predicted to be among those where the adverse effects of environmental changes can be felt the most. Coastal flooding due to unusually high tides displaced a number of people in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and the northern coast of Papua New Guinea in December 2008.  Already people are relocating due to saltwater inundation and contamination. The first batch of Carteret islanders had resettled in Bougainville island Papua New Guinea in 2009 on a plan that would ultimately transfer 1,700 residents due to increasing inhabitability of their atoll home. In 2005, President Anote Tong of Kiribati spoke before the 60th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the need of atoll countries to consider relocation of their populations. In 2008 during the 63rd UN General Assembly session the President of Vanuatu noted the possibility that ‘some of our Pacific colleague nations will be submerged’(UN General Assembly, 2008).

    The Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN), consisting of ten western Pacific rim countries (including the Philippines) is the next door neighbour to the vulnerable Pacific nations. The Pacific is closer than many ASEAN residents suppose. Davao is closer to Palau than to Baguio: 981 kilometers compared to 1,164 kilometers. Indonesia’s easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua (formerly part of Irian Jaya) share the island of New Guinea with the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea.  As such,  ASEAN is in a unique position to push for heightened global awareness and action for the vulnerable Pacific populations facing the possibility of relocation. Yet, it is strangely silent on the issue. ASEAN has both moral and legal obligation not to turn its back on its drowning Pacific neighbours. Morally, ASEAN – or at least most of it – is part of the western fringes of the Pacific region. It is proximate to many Pacific nations, and it has both the resources and landmass to help: two of the world’s largest archipelagos are ASEAN members.  The obligations of humanity require that everyone be they individuals or states, have the duty to prevent or minimize human suffering and distress. Most of us intuitively acknowledge a moral obligation to ‘relieve human suffering or distress’ when doing so would not equally endanger our life and limb. Such stems from our common humanity and is most manifest in one’s instinctive – almost reflexive- response to save a drowning person from a pool, either by ourselves or through another. Writing on the universal obligation to help famine victims of Bangladesh in the early 70’s, Singer posits that such an obligation extends to individuals beyond state borders. His argument is premised from the fact that suffering from lack of food and medicine is bad, and that it is within the power of other states to prevent or relieve the suffering in such a situation. Singer believes that the more privileged nations can do something to reduce the number of starving people without giving up the basic necessities themselves.

    Legally, international human rights instruments mandate everyone to observe the duty to preserve life, the right to life being one of the foundational principles of international relations. ASEAN has legal obligations under international law towards potential climate refugees from the Pacific. Under international human rights law, the right to life is one of the foundational principles of international relations. ‘Everyone has the right to life’ mandates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Corollary to the right to life is every person’s right to adequate food, clothing, housing and the continuous improvement of living conditions (ICESCR, 1966); everyone has the right not to be deprived of his or her means of subsistence (ICCPR, 1966). Climate change deprives people’s means of subsistence in a significant way;  coastal flooding and inundation due to rising sea levels render islands uninhabitable. ASEAN may learn from the African Union (AU) experience.  While AU accepted the UN Refugee Convention definition of ‘refugee,’ it expanded it to include  those compelled to leave their country owing to ‘events seriously disturbing public order.’ Many scholars believe this includes  the environmentally displaced.

    ASEAN can choose to take on the easy path of insularity and parochialism as regards the looming issue of environmental migration, or it can take the high road by transforming itself into a dynamic regional actor pushing for clear policies on how to address it.  Displacements are by nature traumatic and carry with them the impoverishments  of  landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalization, increased morbidity and mortality, food insecurity, loss of access to common property resources, and social disarticulation (Cernea, 2000). ASEAN can do much to help its vulnerable neighbors. With its archipelagos and off shore islands it can open its doors to vulnerable Pacific populations. Resettlement may be permanent or else temporary, pending determination of the environmental migrants permanent home, as in the case of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. At the very least, ASEAN can help raise global consciousness and awareness in rallying the international community to collectively address the issue.

gtabucanonsydney18.10.11

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au

A friend from long ago 

When our youngest was born, I suggested to call him ‘Mariner’  in honor of an old friend Marinus whose name means ‘he who comes from the sea.’ To persuade  my wife I used the pretext that the name ‘connects’ with her formal education as BS and MS in Marine Biology graduate from the University of San Carlos. She was not convinced, and of course I did not insist. Now, I’m doing the  next best thing, which is write a pean about the unusual and unique person who I remember as clear as yesterday, though he died 30 years ago.           

I knew Marinus in high school, through letters. Unlike today’s cyberkids who have access to the internet and could chat with the world in seconds, our time in the mid ‘70s seemed closer to the Pony Express era in the way messages were handwritten, and relied on what seemed like forever waiting for the response to arrive  a  month later. To compensate, I wrote lengthy and vivid narrations of school and home ‘adventures,’ ask questions (to keep the interest going) and share whatever odd schemes I would have fancied on at the moment.

            The old post office was at the ground floor of a two storey private residence in upper J. Navarro Street beside tiny Osmeña bridge beyond which was our school. My buddies and I knew approximately when mails would arrive. With the patience of rock fans queuing for hours just to buy a concert ticket, we would waylay outside the post office building for the mail cars and watch postmen (among them the  brother of our music teacher) disgorge letters from khaki mailbags instead of wait for the letters to be transported to the school library. 

            This was the time when there was not much to do in our small city, except eat  Spanish bread at nearby bakeries where we also knew the schedule when hot bread was taken out and  placed on top of tables in round nigo containers. And when the salesclerks turn the other way, some friends would put hot rolls in their school uniform pockets all for the fun of it. Some evenings we ‘joy ride’ on vehicles of rich friends, or join street corner ‘taxi’ (pay dance) discos in Mabini or Carlos Tan Streets. But if there was one other activity I and a few other chums liked doing the most, it was pen-pal writing. This was how our naive and adventurous minds got their first inoculation of strange lands and on how faraway people lived. All through exchanges of  letters, photos and stamps. Even before high school, I had this burning curiosity as to how life is lived in the other side of the globe, where Christmas trees have real snow while in our case we put dried bubbles of Perla on the branches. So when the pen-friend craze hit our school, I was an easy convert.           

            This started when a lady classmate received fresh cuttings of ‘pen-friend’ columns from a newspaper in Hong Kong sent to her by her cousin. This was the time when we thought Philippine pen-pal advertisements were bogus and don’t answer, while Hong Kong pen-pal sites were not only real, but the persons advertised would end up marrying  interested Filipinos. So we scrambled and scoured on the names, and each one of us appropriated several addresses for ourselves and wrote furiously to the ‘friends.’ 

            A month later, I met our high school librarian walking down the stairs with bundles of letters. She handed to me two sealed foreign looking envelopes with my name scribbled on their face: one from a young lady from Malaysia who enclosed reserved leaf veins dyed in bright pink and tangerine, and another from  William Ho of Hong Kong.That was the happiest day of my sophomore year and soon, my friends received their responses as well. I loved the smell of the mails and we treasured the letter and photos like relics. One thing led to another and I found myself becoming a regular letter writer to people around the world of all shapes and sizes including a grandmother from New Zealand who, knowing that I collect stamps gave me stamps with pictures of roses from her country. By this time, I had become somewhat of a veteran in the epistolary art, and had written to and requested several magazines to publish my details where I usually say that I’m interested in all people of any age. 

            Marinus wrote me by way of a large card with a painting of a dream-like scene from the Amazon forest. He called the card ‘flamboyant’ but necessary to catch my attention hoping I’d write back. He found it curious a young man of 16 could be broadminded. As we exchanged mails, I learned he was a lithographer –whatever that meant- as well as homegrown philosopher from Fort Lauderdale, and in due time, I became his ‘student’ and friend. I regularly received books from him, many written by Krishnamuri, ratiocinating on the theme ‘truth is a pathless land.’  I would have twice a month dose of Marinus’ own mental meanderings and scribbled ‘philosophizings.’ I was a willing student and would write back about my reactions as well as what I felt I earned.  From him I learned that happiness is the discovery of beauty beyond the self. My understanding of this is beyond the confines of our petty pursuits for money, success and recognition lies an immense wellspring of beauty, the  kind one would find, say, in a dewdrop clinging for dear life on a leaf, the smile of banana vending village women, and genuine affection rooted in care for others.        

            Marinus refused guided tours - called them artificial - and liked to explore  new places by himself. He preferred the wet market to talk with ordinary folks, hear their stories. He said this was how he got to know places and people, not through the studied by lines of tour guides waving measured smiles from  air-conditioned coach buses. Before Marinus got sick, he visited us in Ormoc.  I brought him to    my parents’ house in the village and introduced him to my parents, family members and friends. At that time there was revelry and dancing  at the village square led by my very own father who danced the  curacha. This was in 1980, the same year  Marinus died months after he went back to America. His death was a shock. He was 34. His twin brother telegrammed me about his passing – and how he chose its date and time, and that some of Marinus’ old clothes were sent to me. I never received them. And I never became interested in pen-pal writing again. 

            Now, 30 years after, the memories of those days are  still intact. Marinus was a friend from long ago, my mentor, and the first to call  me ‘world citizen.’ To him I dedicate these words from a sonnet of Shakespeare: ‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old.’

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au
16 June 2012

Me and my piano

I WAS Grade 6 when father bought our piano. Though old looking and secondhand, it nevertheless gave us joy as children. It was about the only ‘antique’ thing in the house, and though the case had dried up with scratches, yet its curved legs were elegant and sometimes you notice the leaf carvings on the sides. I was very happy seeing it ‘arrive’ at our home. Years before, I remember trying hard to open the lid of another piano in a family friend’s house but could not do so because it was locked. I was scolded.

When my grandmother’s church bought a pedal powered organ (this was before electricity reached the village) the instrument was temporarily placed in our house until carpenters finished making its plywood casing complete with lock. I would spend hours banging, rolling and frolicking my fingers on the keys, sometimes put the side of my head on the naphthalene smelling keys like they’re pillows and then kick the pedals to grandmother’s dismay. The organ was promptly transferred to the church.

Our first teacher was Ma’am Rosie, the piano owner’s daughter. Story has it that her father, a Boy Scout master, died on a ship that sank between our village and a nearby island. I remember she wrote a letter to my parents offering to sell her piano. Father must have asked us what our thoughts were, since I recalled reading Ma’am Rosie’s letter and can still picture her slanting handwriting strokes and color of the pad she used.

On hindsight, how difficult it must be for Ma’am Rosie to give up the only piano she had, her true friend and companion, a real possession bought especially for her by her father. Whatever her needs were that time, she must have also hoped my parents would be able to take care the way she took care of her piano. Maybe she also prayed the new owner’s children would find delight in it the way she, in her time, filled her own house with abundant laughter, music, love, and life entertaining her parents with skillfully executed servings of melodious and ‘sonorous’ (her term) Visayan piano songs.

In the beginning she would to come to our house on weekends and taught me and my sister waltzes and duets. At times it was difficult absorbing everything she said. So she would play her favorite pieces, and demonstrate the simple, to complex executions of Visayan folk tunes on the piano saying, all these keys are really ‘one and the same.’  That was the point of my difficulty. Since the keys looked alike how would the fingers know which key to land on? Yet we plodded on.

A few weeks passed and Ma’am Rosie stopped coming to our house. Maybe the rigors of travel from her town to our village with really bad un-cemented roads proved too much on her. To continue our lessons mother enrolled us in a formal piano school in the city. I can still hear on my mind the thunder deep metallic sound of the tall upright with yellowed keys where my sister and I took turns striving to hit the correct keys, as our legs dangled from the seats hardly reaching the pedals. Our new teacher was a competent woman, piano wise, who loved wearing matching up and down ‘terno,’ bags and umbrella. She can attack and scale with ease the difficult notes of Malagueña, Glow Worm and, Charles Williams’ ‘Jealous Lover’ -the theme from the movie The Apartment. Jealous lover, to her, represents one woman’s quixotic love for a priest - hers.

My sister never went farther beyond the first piece ‘Off I go to Musicland’ (‘training ear and eye and hand’). Probably she found formal training tedious and not to her ‘free spirit’ temperament. She abandoned the lessons altogether. But she has evolved in other areas of music such as karaoke singing, shaping and ‘perfecting’ her voice craft along the style of Sharon Cuneta a favorite singer of Tagalog compositions. Whenever she comes for a visit our sibling ritual is to do pop numbers with piano accompaniment. Reveling on the piano had been my and my sister’s bonding.

Rabindranath Tagore once said that the faith waiting in the heart of a seed promises a miracle of life which it cannot prove at once. I am thankful of the unflinching trust of our first music teacher, giving up her piano for us. It was faith that says hey, these bumbling musical ignoramuses whose only input is raw interest can still evolve (a saving grace worth looking into) not necessarily as big-time musicians but, at least, can be counted on among those who continue to keep faith in music’s mysterious power to bring souls to higher levels of life and love.

gil.tabucanon@mq.edu.au

07.12.10

Some Totlec thoughts and the parable of the lost boy

YESTERDAY WHEN I arrived from Cebu, mother handed to me a book given by my cousin from California. Under normal conditions, having come from travel, I would just sit on the low chair and watch TV. Instead I flipped open the book’s avocado green cross cover with expressionistic flowers growing in each plot, delved and found myself meditating on the pages. This is the first time I read “something” about “Toltec” thoughts and “wisdom”, and how pleasantly surprised I was to note how the spiritual insights arrived at by inhabitants of that ancient civilization in Mexico can be so applicable to contemporary Filipino settings.

Take this for instance: “…it is important for you to master you own dream; that is why the Toltecs become dream masters. Your life is a manifestation of your dream; it is an art. And you can change your life anytime if you aren’t enjoying the dream. Dream masters create a masterpiece of life; they control the dream by making choices. Everything has consequences and a dream master is aware of the consequences”…”the freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves. But if we look at our lives we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others…the first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem.”

There’s a story—a parable—I want to tell of a rich boy who loved going to a mountain (one that looked like Magsanga). He was a privileged boy with life befitting the comforts of a king: red, blue and yellow cars, air conditioned rooms and a sense of sure security. For who else would inherit the business empire that took his parents their entire life to build. But unfathomably and paradoxically the boy took no interest in the

business, its perks and pampered seats. As David Larrabee said in “Sabrina” when asked why he appeared to care little of their family fortune ran by his elder brother,” why should I when he’s there”. Instead the boy loved to sit on mountain tops or roam outdoors, his arm skin brushing against blades of grass. He loves to see the twirling sun set. A “fool on a hill” for some, but for me he it is who “sees the world spinning round”. But his parents, not getting any younger by the day, will have none of this and pressed and egged him to start taking charge, for does not logic tell who else will? The boy gave in, got married, and stopped going to the mountain. That place for him has become a memory, a glass framed fixture standing on display cabinet in a corridor blanketed by dust and gloom. He never did get to figure out that which his heart in the beginning pointed would be his own life’s original pathway.

If that parable were a play of Aeschelus in olden Greece, the “chorus” will probably appear and sing wearing masks of long faces and sadness saying: “why so sad and blue and uncertain when I have seen you easily climb the swaying palms? You can tell the speed of the wind, height of the tallest hill. You can flicker your full lamplight to say hello to southern friends at the other curve of the bay. You fit into the blue wind, as the bird and clay earth like the color of your shirt and sun burnt hands. Groping for answers that day I want to stop the twirling sun. How I wish to let you know. Someone’s watching those lean and confident lizard steps. But would you never know. I’m using binoculars.”

(June 4-10, 2001)