I am returning to Filipino and Fil-Am books, short stories and poems. I intend to resume my Filipino reading albeit it will be slow for a while due to school until summer's end. It is good for me to retreat back to the fiction of Filipinos, it is a joy.

There are moments I wake up to utter phrases like "Song of Iwahig" and I don't know where I picked up Iwahig. Despite my daily use of English I still utter Princess Urduja when I feel like remembering my past. I know there was the Code of Sumakwel and there were human bones in Tabon Caves that proved the Pinoy existed since 25 thousand years ago, at least. Simple words like Waywaya evoke a time and age I could not completely picture but I know it existed. I dream of myself wearing a loin cloth, diving for pearls and swimming among the corals and chewing betel nuts.

It is a joy to return to my roots the way I must return : I walk the walk of the Igorot. I swim the swim of the Badjao.

But this is the twenty-first century and I am sitting in front of my computer. For the last two years I did nothing but talk about my feelings about our country's politics. I am tired of it - I will not be able to forgive myself if I spend my life talking about something that would never change. There are good political analysts in our country and they know what to look and talk about.

I want to share with you, dear readers, this line instead --- Lourdes reminded herself that sometimes you feel like this. That sometimes you have moods where little things mean more than they would on other days. Her headache was barely perceptible hum, the lowest blue flame before nothing ---

Here my friends is the voice of the modern Filipina, she no longer hums ay, ay, salidumay, salidumay diway. She no longer aspires to acquire the Maria Clara virtues. She instead talks about life on the streets of United States.

Lara Stapleton tells a story involving three sisters: Lourdes, Luz and Dulce utilizing Lourdes' viewpoint. On this particular day, the three sisters decide to have an outing in the park. As they are getting into the park, Lourdes narrates her feelings about her sisters; how she feels being left out, abused, ignored.

It's all about sibling rivalry.

Until Dulce turns into somebody the other two do not expect. Dulce meets a boy in the park and for reasons unfathomed, flirts with him defying everything. With this twist, the story unfolds into an impending crisis, a disaster looming out of youthful passion.

It is this crisis that hooks the reader into the story's loop. Reading it, I desperately wanted to get involved, like I wanna get into the scene to protect Dulce from that Mexican boy and slap her in the face for being so stupid. I wanted to scream at the two girls to call the police or call their mother or just grab their sister by the hair and tie her up.

But Lara will in no way let me touch her story. She's in control until its devastating outcome. And boy how she handles it! And I say to myself, "My God, this is so true." I could feel it happening right this minute. Its most painful sting is, I am Lourdes at times, but mostly, I am Dulce.

Have you experienced witnessing wrongdoing which you know is so easy to solve and yet you cannot do anything about it? Have you felt so obsessed with anything that no one can stop you from acquiring it?

Then, you will see yourself in The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing.

Its tempo is staccato, pure action, less mulling. The sentences are short and crisp I can hear them at the base of my skull. The tempo has moved me from so-so feeling to becoming nervous to becoming restless to becoming angry and to becoming sad. And through it, I see all the Filams in my daily grinds and more importantly, I see all Filipinos.

How many times have I screamed through this web site about all the wrongs in our country? There is nothing more frustrating than watching our country being savaged by savages while I am ten thousand miles away to do anything about it. Not that it requires ME to solve our country's ills - but sometimes, I feel my presence in Manila would prove that there is one less Filipino being fooled by people who think Filipinos are stupid. My web site's writing is a proof of that.

There are many Filipino decisions which, up to now, I could not fathom; Filipino values I could not understand. For so many years, I stood by watching, restless, sleepless, unable to do anything but to let THEM do what they want.

And the THEM are the Filipinos of passion and obsession; the Filipinos who must have whatever they want NOW. Ignoring reason and pragmatism. It's like a parent watching his/her son rebel and destroy himself. It's like watching a man on top of a building threatening to jump to his death. It's like watching a friend acquire a life-threatening disease.

Stapleton's story has produced that emotion in me, reading it felt like watching three sisters encounter a powerful, monstrous, unbeatable, gigantic emotion inside their sister as they laboriously struggled to figure the way out of it.

Their decision was more frightening than their monster.

But the good thing about this short story was - it gave me a learning experience, it gave me greater understanding of human nature.

Life, sometimes, is like a blue flame before nothing - the death of light, the last utterance of a flickering light, the last cry, the last joy, the last passion, the last struggle, the last emotion, the last anger… it's that last threshold that is barely perceptible and palpable. Before it's over.

I read this story more than a year ago at a time I thought our country was on the brink of anarchy. Stapleton's story assured me that everything would be fine, it's just the Philippine's last blue flame before nothing. It could indeed be frightening but things will be alright.

Alex Maskara is Pinoy