I love the movie Gladiator, it's been a while since I've watched it but what lingers in my mind is the dream of the main character; it's his return to home, to his wife and kid. As he laid dying, he went back to that dream.

I too have a dream. But my dream have changed dramatically through the years. Maybe it is inherent to people who have left their homelands to dream of finally returning, but the home they dream about is much much beautiful, in fact I have created a beautiful home in my mind, it is the home I am going to return to.

When I started working in America, I would always dream of home before going to sleep. I would visualize the road leading to our house, the neighborhood, the men and women and everyone I remember going through their usual routines; but I made them move the way I wanted them to, preparing meals, going to the store, playing, singing, joking, selling, buying, working. And around them, I would see gardens and pets and green mountains and bright sun, I'd wrap them with tropical clothes surrounded by green and gold fields.

Until I went home.

I went home to a home that was the exact reflection of Tondo that I used to know.

Nowadays my dream of going home is different. It is Gladiator-like, like a segment of a Kurosawa movie. My going home is in black and white, time of day is twilight, when darkness and light fight over dominance, in a place completely strange. I feel it's somewhere in the South, beside a river. I walk beside this river, lined by coconut trees. I don't know but I see a young woman in white dress, carrying a pot of water on her head walking before me and I follow her.

Then we enter the barrio of intense beauty.

Like the beauty of Merlinda Bobis short stories.

...

Everytime I review a book, some major Pinoy death (at least a death threat now ) gets into the news. An alleged Pinoy was taken hostage by Iraqi militants and is supposed to be beheaded after 72 hours of Philippine non-withdrawal from their country.

Do they really think that will bother me?

If I were a Filipino to be captured and beheaded in a strange country, I would probably be thankful for this great honor. I don't think the Iraqi understand the Filipino perception of death. Death is something natural to me. Everyone, (including the militants) will die, and when I die, what exactly will I see in my after world?

I know where I will go to, as I was just about to talk about it in my blog last night. I will go to a town where color is no longer important. What matters is the earth, the village, the people I know, where trees stay the way they are forever. Everything is exotic where I will go --

pearls,
fish,
sea cucumbers,
starfishes,
beach,
coconuts,
the silver linings in the sky,
women dressed in white,
parade with clay jars atop their heads,
and birds fly with songs of solitude,
men light up their lamps
as they begin their sojourn
from the river that leads to the sea --
all these things will occupy my home where I will go to.

If I will have an accident while young or leave my death bed in my nineties, or even before I will lose reason in my mind, I will automatically go into my dream mode. Like the Gladiator who left and immediately flew to his dream.

I will see my family and the village the way I knew it. Oh it is such a beautiful experience to be suspended in a dream mode of everlasting beauty.

...

My mother started all the fantasies in my heart, the belief in the Supernatural.

She would call each of her children when she felt pain in her breasts (to her children's amusement). She said it was a way to remind her that one of her seven children was sick. Which was always the case.

She created an out-of-this-world example for me, and maybe I inherited her genes that believed in Supernatural or Destiny or Fate. I am not embarrassed to be defined as fatalistic. She was ten years old when the 'Old Man' approached her, it was the year when her Uncle Simo would not return from Death March of Bataan.

When the 'Old Man' showed her the spirit of Uncle Simo, she told this to her grandparents. Only then did her whole family accept Uncle Simo's demise. The 'Old Man' would not go away from her, she'd always claim that she decided this or that, accepted this or that, anticipated this or that, hoped this or that upon the approval of the 'Old Man'. I always thought that my mother never lived alone. Though she lived all her life in Lubao, I know she saw things beyond the town.

A few hours before her death, as she was sitting on her wheelchair waiting for her trip to San Fernando for her last dialysis, she began to decline becoming lethargic and was in the initial phase of coma.

The last time she spoke, while staring far away with eyes that were marbled and white (this according to my sister Zenaida), my mother said, 'Apo, tara na. Tara na.' ('Old Man, lets go. Lets go.')

And I am glad to know she was accompanied to her other world by the 'Old Man'.

And this is probably the reason I too, picked up my own version of the 'Old Man' but what I created in my mind was the Lady we all think about when we think of homeland. You who have read most of my writings would recognize her, I called her the Lady of Manila Bay, or Maria Sinukwan - legendary queen of Arayat, or the dead mother of Antonio Salamanca in Diary of Masquerade.

She is the One walking solemnly after the catastrophe, as if her mere presence assures me that everything will be alright. And when I encountered her again in Merlinda Bobis' White Turtle, I knew I'd be excited to read about her.

I saw and read about her in at least two stories in this book: FISH-HAIRED WOMAN a story of magic and terror and sadness and WHITE TURTLE the woman chanter of exotic poetry.

...

But I have understood the tale of the Fish-Hair Woman, a story of magic realism in its purest sense.

Hair. How was it linked with the heart? I’ll tell you – it had something to do with memory. Every time I remembered anything that unsettled my heart, my hair grew at least one handspan.

Here is the story of the 27 year Iraya woman, known throughout the town for her hair that turns into a fish net to bring into surface the dead that were buried deep into the river.

She is the storyteller of a country who always choose to forget the ‘war’ where all the people suffered, in fact, the suffering had been so intense that they became numb, and forgetful, until she casts her hair net to fish out the pain, and they start to remember.

"Fish with your hair woman." Always that command which summed up my life. After the government declared its total war against the rebels, I realized the purpose of my being, why I had come to be such a freak of nature, why I was more hair than body, the span of it nearly thrice my whole frame. What incredible length and thickness and strength.

...

That's probably the reason why a woman is the one I dream about, in a place I'd call my Rest.

I don't think of America as my final destination. It is rather a black and white place, where the river is lighted silver by the twilight, where the sky is gray and a banca (wooden boat) is waiting for me. I'd take the banca to an island. On that island she'd emerge, the long haired Filipina who carries a clay jar of water atop her head. Without speaking she beckons me and I follow - to a world where the night sky is filled with stars and the air is fresh and full of insect sounds. And I become one again with the earth where I came from.

Is this the world I lived in while I was in the womb of a woman?
Is this the world I'd return to when I return to the bowels of Earth?

There are times when we see nothing but pain in our country. We're a people who were never given to Rest. The first half of the year we were subjected to the shenanigans called Politicians. Now we have a Filipino's life threatened to die in a foreign land. Innocently.

Those of us who watch this country move can't help but observe an endless cycle of pain and sufferring, ALL, are acts of Man, not of GOD.

As for me, God had already given me my Rest as I listen to the woman who gave birth, nurtured and saved me - My mother, my Sister, my Daughter.

I do not think that this Earth is meant to become a Paradise.

My paradise is in my dreams, as she beckons me to come along and follow.

...

As I proceed to the next story, of that which carries the title of the book, I find myself following a trail only my wooden boat knows, as if my boat has a mind of its own.

WHITE TURTLE is absolutely terrific, it is maternal - no doubt about it - a grandmother Lola Basyon telling the story of something she alone could tell, in a language no one understood though its flow is compelling and beautiful.

She tells the story of a turtle that carries dreams on its back, a white white white turtle who travels through the wide wide ocean to listen to its story written upon its back. It’s a dream. It’s a song. It’s a turtle’s poem delivered by Lola Basyon.

But the White Turtle form far away would not let go of this story-telling without its presence.

It came in time for its reading.

This White Turtle is the last among the guests, and it began to deliver its story like choral music together with Lola Basyon.

I am totally sold to the stories of Merlinda. Thanks.





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