With only a few texts and online messages, a friendship between people who have not yet seen for years is seemingly starved for attention and nurturing. This friendship may fray, and in the future meeting an awkward feeling rises and wrestles with a realized irony that seeing again a friend is like meeting a stranger. It is a […]
Read more "Open Friends"Teʂekkür. The word twisted my tongue (it sounds t’sh’k’r) but sweetened the Turkish smile of Ozgür, a newfound friend I met in my recent travel in the Cordillera, Northern Philippines. He taught me the word a few nights after we had a small chat about our respective cultures. He helped me again to recall the […]
Read more "Thank You"I know my relatives, at least in my mother’s side of the family. (I grew up barely knowing my father’s side.) I know my uncle and aunt and their spouses who have become part of our family. I know their adult children who are my first cousins, and their spouses and their children, my nieces […]
Read more "A Life With Relatives"It is hard not to speak to the one you Love. I did that twice. I did that to choose to allow silence between us, in an attempt to find some cure for our toxic arguments about many things we do and don’t do. In those weeks of not talking, I realized we had been […]
Read more "Silent Love"I remember my interviewer’s face in my first ever job interview 7 years ago. He was looking astig, occasionally puffing his cigarette while perusing my resume. He then squinted at me as if he was reading my mind. I like to think that I was a rookie in a movie scene, fated of meeting a […]
Read more "Tell Me Something About Your Soul"Separate is a root word that metamorphoses into multiple meanings yet often reminds most people in the personal level emotionally-charged experiences. For those who have endured difficult marriages, to separate is to end the suffering of living with someone’s hell; those separated are the ones who did it. Separation is either an action that cuts […]
Read more "In Our Separateness"Picture this: a young man sitting beneath the shade of a guava tree, lying restfully with its native hat covering its head. He sleepily sits there, waiting for the guava fruit to fall instead of picking it. This image of a familiar folklore character has been known for ages across generations of many Filipinos. He […]
Read more "Is Juan Tamad Really Lazy?"I remember the face of my math teacher when I was in third grade. Her eyebrows were almost hooked together as she got irritated when any of us in the class couldn’t recite the multiplication table. For a third grader, it was a feeling of terror and math was not just a tough subject but […]
Read more "After Math"When it comes to Love, one theme often emerges in those many stories I have heard from friends and strangers: the struggle to Love has wretched the relationship between them and those they Love. Like a spectator, I can objectively watch them as they grapple with the reality of Loving. It is a struggle to […]
Read more "Wounding and Healing"Here in my place, I can see from afar Mount Makiling, the famed mystical mountain of Laguna province, about two hours south of Manila. Since my childhood, I have seen the mountain nestled in the east, giving birth to the rising sun everyday. Locals here know that the mountain is the home to a diwata, […]
Read more "The Divine Face"
Pathfinders' Commune 