Return Mail by bulitas (from www.peyups.com)

I tore open the white envelope slightly damped with sweat from my right hand. I tried to maintain the half-excited, half-nervous look to mix with the room’s ambience. As the deafening silence started to embrace each person in the room, I tried my best to hold my tears on the verge of rolling down my cheeks. I kept myself away from others so that I could read the letter thoroughly. My emotions were intensified by the weather outside. Rain poured down in a frenzy as if it was a projection of the collective emotions in the room.

I read the letter on the off-white paper near the window where an ample amount of light managed to make its way through the window sills. I wondered if my eyes were fooling me again. jumbled words appeared before me as if teasing me to decipher their hidden meanings. In an instant, I have read words, even sentences I usually hear from my father.


wala kang patutunguhan
ang yabang mo
sino ka ba sa akala mo? anak lang kita!
ang haba ng nguso mo
akala mo kung sino kang matalino!


Random flashes of flashbacks started to hit me. The impact was so hard that it felt as if my internal organs were about to erupt. I felt the swelling heat brewing inside me as I tried to digest each word, each sentence I read from the retreat letter written on the off-white paper. The swelling feeling on my head was commanding me to tear the letter apart to release my rage. when I felt my patience was only inches away from giving up, a cold, wrinkled hand calmly pat my back and told me it was ok to cry. It was Father Peter’s hand. His look was more freezing the his hands. He smiled as he whispered to my ear God loves you.

I hid the paper from his view like he’s a wolf preying on my letter. Cry? Yes. I wanted to cry during that time but my tear glands were not manufacturing any. Maybe the vapors of rage somehow disrupted its normal tear production. But i did cry, inside. It was hard to read a blank letter. It was even harder to pretend that you feel almost the same as most people in the room- people were sobbing, crying, and smiling because of the actual letters they’ve read. Letters with actual words and sentences written by their parents or guardians, not a blank off-white paper full of illusions of having actual words and sentences.

I was the one who submitted the letter sealed in a white envelope to my class adviser back then. I remembered the night I asked my father for a retreat letter or even a note. I was not demanding him one; it was a class requirement. After a week, a night before the spiritual retreat, I asked him the letter but he replied in a stoic tone,


ano ba yang kalokohan na yan? Wag mo nga akong guluhin?


It was then that i managed to find the of-white paper on my room, folded it into three and sealed it in a white envelope.

Lately, while clearing my file basket, I managed to find the white envelope with the blank off-white paper. I thought disposing it would be great since it was an added junk on my piles of files, but i ought not. I opened the letter and again, flashes of flashbacks enveloped me. Amazingly i can still read words, sentences, and paragraphs from the blank paper. The letters appeared as if they were talking to me, telling me to write with them, be with them. Without any hesitation, I grabbed a pen and started filling up the off-white spaces with the flow of black ink.
I wrote:


papa,
thank you. salamat dahil madalas niyong sinasabing wala akong patutunguhan. salamat dahil lagi niyo akong pinupuna at pinapagalitan. salamat sa madalas na pagpaparamdam na ang liit-liit kong tao. salamat sa pagsasabing ang haba ng nguso ko. salamat nung minsang sinabihan o akong walang kwenta. salamat dahil akala mo mahiyain ako. salamat sa pag-aakalang adik ako, payat at basagulero.

salamat, kundi dahil sa’yo, wala akong patutunguhan. salamat, kundi dahil sa’yo, hindi ako magiging matapang para harapin ang buhay. salamat, kundi dahil sa’yo, hindi ko maarating ang kinatatayuan ko ngayon.

salamat sa pagpapanday sa akin. salamat kayo ang naging ama ko.

salamat sa sulat niyo dati.

mahal ko kayo.

anak

I placed the letter on the white envelope but i did not seal it. I placed it near his cabinet in our room.
*******

One of the greatest lesson he instilled in me was humility.

His constant nags and beating taught me that no matter how good you think you are, you are nothing but a speck of dust in the vast universe, the world will revolve even without me and that my name does not even appear as a footnote in history.

Thanks Papa.

"A Song of Myself"

2

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

52

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

-Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)

A break from CivRev

"Make friends with fear, Lucien always said, because it will not go away, and it will destroy you if left uncontrolled."

-John Grisham (A Time To Kill)

The Rene Effect

"This country started out as an experiment in freedom..."

-Sam Waterson as A.D.A. Jack McCoy in Law and Order

The Beauty of the Constitution

This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie "With Honors"

Simon Wilder: You asked the question, sir, now let me answer it. The beauty of the Constitution is that it can always be changed. The beauty of the Constitution is that it makes no set law other than faith in the wisdom of ordinary people to govern themselves.

Proffesor Pitkannan: Faith in the wisdom of the people is exactly what makes the Constitution incomplete and crude.

Simon Wilder: Crude? No, sir. Our "founding parents" were pompous, white, middle-aged farmers, but they were also great men. Because they knew one thing that all great men should know: that they didn't know everything. Sure, they'd make mistakes, but they made sure to leave a way to correct them. The president is not an "elected king," no matter how many bombs he can drop. Because the "crude" Constitution doesn't trust him. He's just a bum, okay Mr. Pitkannan? He's just a bum.

To My Lions and Tigers and Bears

It's about time I learn to let go of some things. I've been through a lot of ups and downs this past year that I need to sit down and catch up on things. I need to take some time to figure some things out.

I've fallen and picked myself up at least half a dozen times every month this year. I've harbored ill-will and entertained thoughts of slipping muriatic acid into certain people's food. I've laughed till I cried at jokes I've heard a thousand times and I've thrown a law book across the room out of frustration at least once this past week. Too much has been going on that I failed to appreciate the better things in life.

I failed to appreciate what good friends I have, who are all willing to stick with me through good times and the bad. I failed to see that there are still people who have faith in others, those that see the good inside everyone.

I'm not yet ready to forgive those who hurt me-- I'm not that good enough a person yet. But I am a good enough person the thank the people in my life. I am thankful for the sun, brightening my day like nothing else can and I am thankful for the moon for being there after the sun has gone down. I am grateful for the stars that guided me on this journey called life and the knowledge it brings that I have something to look up to during the darkest of hours. I am grateful for the flowers along the path for making me feel better when I feel down and the thorns on the roses for teaching me to be careful. I am grateful for the rain for washing away my fears and my sorrows. Most of all, I am grateful for those that kept me company on this journey called life-- my lions and tigers and bears.

Two months of being a 25-year-old gave me a crash course on letting go. I also learned to let go of the past... past memories, past loves and learned to live a life that isn't based on the what-ifs of the world. I had to let go of what I had (and what I thought I had) to make room for new things in my life. I learned how to sort through the memories and the people, through clothes and shoes, books and photographs, cases and scratch paper. I'm closer to figuring out which ones have to go and which ones to keep. I will surely keep my lions and tigers and bears with me.

Wind and the Window Flower by Robert Frost

LOVERS, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.


But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.