30 June 2015She was only two (2) years old when their father left and decided never to return again. Along with him is the music that should, on the very least, alleviate the troubles of the mind and spirit in the days ahead. In the company of other men, they journeyed to a place that soon cost their lives a lifeless cost.Her father joined the USAFFE in defense of our country during the Japanese occupation. Fate eventually prevailed and they were captured and forcibly brought to Bataan. The demise of their father was occasioned by incessant walking in the streets of suffocating dust, intolerable stench and punishing heat. Some survived, others escaped while some others were executed due largely to their inability to continue moving ahead. It was literally a march to their death.Not a tombstone, not even a grave could attest to his death or that he actually lived before that. He died along the way before reaching Capas, Tarlac where an encampment aw
25 July 2015Oh Lord, unmask us of our unworthiness that prevents us from experiencing your love in its entirety. Make our intentions congruent with your plans and our viewpoints your perspective. Make us always aware that our plan is merely a subset of your greater plan. Help us realize that influence is the seed that bears the fruits of goodness and change. May the goodness we do bring forth the change we ought to see.Protect our workplace, Oh Lord, for it is our means of dignifying and monetizing our toils. Let every denomination earned bridge our eventual future with our present realities.Protect our families and our loved ones, Oh Lord, for it is mostly for them that we are continually driven. Lead us always to the right path despite the uncertainties of our journey.Protect our wholeness, Oh Lord, for we are better than our broken, partial and individual parts. May our indivisible resolve to follow you enliven among us an even greater
18 May 2021Herein lies the greatest challenge of introducing a collection of essays written over a period of six (6) long years. A duration long enough for a child to be born alive, walk unassisted, speak fluently and think intelligibly. But after six (6) years of occasional writing, it suddenly stopped. Work took the better of it as if there was nothing there to strike a chord and tell me that I used to write as spirited as before.The years between this piece and the one prior to it was devoted mainly to writing using a different language and syntax. Sentences usually start with an equal sign to prompt the application to compute or automate something. Every little thing at work involving columns, rows or cells was solved using Microsoft Excel. Thus, the literary writing hiatus must have been temporarily called off and replaced with its numeric, logical or conditional counterpart owing to the demands of work.And because of the need to collaborate a
About The AuthorThe author is a Bicolano who hails from Binanuhan, Pilar, Sorsogon. Having lived half of his lifetime in the same locality, he devoted most of his time to learning practical things through observations and several failed attempts. Because of his ardent desire and persistence to harness, develop and maximize everything that he has to its fullest potential, he was able to achieve a certain level of mastery on matters which is of prime significance. He is passionate about a lot of things. He is simultaneously a carpenter, composer, inventor, mathematician, choir and acoustic band member, frequent user of Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets to solve work – related problems and, with the impending publication of this literature, an author. His acumen for writing was greatly improved due to his exposure to the legal parlance during the stint of her elder sister as a Notary Public and Municipal Councilor. Unconsciously, it influenced his literary style that would start taking
29 September 2009“To see the world in a drop of water and experience eternity before it subsides.”Herein narrator went on to live since to recount a fairly insignificant, almost common and entirely negligible story of being swept by the current, having wept due to guilt and being upset out of complacency for the inability to do something that would risk both life and limb.My brother-in-law was confined in the hospital for days suspecting and eventually ruling out Influenza A-H1N1 as the culprit. As a result, I have to stay in their home for two (2) nights until that fateful morning. Overnight rains resulted to sudden increase in the water level of the nearby river. The typhoon is about to begin.Even before finishing corn for breakfast around nine in the morning last Saturday (26 September 2009), water was increasing in an exponential rate. And since time is of the essence, I started transferring smaller objects to the second floor of their home
01 October 2009Too often, we regret for neglecting something presumed to be useful in the future since there is no direct or immediate need for such at present. This defines how we evolved to date. How people became so dispensable and indifferent is an entirely different story.Let us take for instance the concept of parity which states that everything should be distributed fairly and evenly; giving to each what rightfully belongs to him. Justice then is a one-to-one correspondence. When one does not get his fair share, conflict arises.Life is a mathematical existence regardless of the existence, or contrariwise absence, of numbers itself. In fact, people designed clocks, watches and chronometers, both digital and analog, to tell time and later let it rule their lives. Consider ourselves as elements of this mathematical world and our lives as a subset of all the existence in this planet and from there, we will see the magnitude and expanse of the un
06 March 2010When I was a kid, people were so fascinated with the kind of memory I have. Since having tests for certain acumen or gift is a rarity in the provinces, (Binanuahan, Pilar, Sorsogon to be more specific) being considered special was already enough. I will try not to be too narrative of what I have been through for that would be totally unnecessary. What contributed much to this state is an actual rush of blood.It was one clear, Sunday morning that forever corrupted some of the files in my memory and no amount of re-formatting will ever restore everything in place. I was not fully aware of the impending danger on that fateful day otherwise I could have averted the ensuing predicament altogether. A portion of a 2” x 2” x 12” lumber is hanging near the roof of that house where a usual Sunday amazement is in town. Perhaps curiosity took it from there as I squeezed myself past the grown-ups looking intently at how an elderly man adroitly handled a cons
31 May 2010If death is likened to gravity, which we cannot absolutely defy, then living with it on a regular frequency is a state of partial weightlessness. Our daily existence is a continuing skirmish with death. For every moment that a life-form, however animate or lethargic, is sent to inhabit this earth, it is just a matter of time before finally the probability and likelihood of death becomes apparently a certainty. Chances are, nature has its distinct scheme of impermanence and turns everything in this world, regardless of significance or magnitude, into sub-atomic particles to restore equilibrium.Having lived in a nuclear family of nine (9) inclusive of parents and siblings, I have witnessed death more than twice. But since my memory seems to fail me in the retrieval of memories, I will stick to two most remembered losses. First was when my father died and once more when my maternal grandmother departed as well.The most vivid memory that I have of m