achtung

Die lampen in diesem Gebaude sind
ungerfahr 6 mal sparsamer
im Electrezitatsverbrauch
als die lampen
fur die sie
ausgetauscht wurden.

Home

My thoughts about home occurred to me as I was looking at an old family picture one day to wipe off the dust from the picture frame. I looked at how my parents looked like when they were younger together with my two elder brothers and me. Reminiscing, it took me awhile before I wipe off the dusty frame. I just didn’t realize that a drop of tear or two that dropped on the picture frame helped cleaned it better with a soft white linen cloth to protect it from scratches. While doing it, I protectively held it firmly so I would not accidentally drop it. Being protective of the memories of a family somehow makes one feel at home. My parents and our eldest brother are gone now while I and the rest of my siblings have still our lives all by ourselves to move on. I felt the void when the family is incomplete. I felt like I’m missing home, the sense of a whole and complete family. But as we all know, we have to go on with our lives or bring it upon ourselves to stop the cycle of life.

But even in death, when a loved one passes away, we say that our loved one who passed away finally found home. If that’s the case, what is this condition in life before you’ll pass away, are you not home prior to what’s going to happen? Is living not home then? Are we saying that living is not home and without explicitly saying it that it feels like we’re living in hell? Isn’t this confusing? Maybe confusion makes one feel not at home?

Home is the subject that keeps lingering on my mind for a long while but didn’t have time or the courage to really sit down and write about it. How am I to attack the subject of home then, I thought? One thing is sure, I won’t attack it like a puppet does to please the master nor the kind of attack where the imperialists use to plunder and sow destruction on helpless small nation and people at the stroke of the night or else any more of this I’m going to have a heart attack. With simplicity at best and wit is desirable in the comfort of one’s reading.

I did come across few poems and songs where home is mostly talked about by poets and songwriters. I hope I’m not pushing it too much to sound like a poet and a songwriter rolled into one trying to dissect the subject of home? How do I see it myself? Is it something deeper or something shallow that one may not ever hear that subject come tomorrow? I use to hear this song, “a house is not a home.” by Dionne Warwick and it kept reverberating in my mind like an echo from out of nowhere or more so from the valley of Arizona to the mountains of the Philippine cordilleras. Is the sweetness of that song the same sweetness when you think about home? Is home just about having a house, a place to stay to sleep the night away?

I came across an article about a 70’s singer songwriter who considers home very important to her and the subject consistently shows up in her lyrics. She said that home means comfort. She now lives in a house cabin surrounded by nature blessed with the presence of mountains, trees and horses in Idaho. And that house where she resides is more than what she has. She says it gives her the sense of being wrapped in the warm blanket of nature. This reality of her home completes her.

On the other hand, I came to think about those shanty dwellings in Manila, the so called squatters the media portrays. Dwellings where the walls are made of pieces of wood and cardboard or galvanized iron, whose roofs are reinforced with worn out tires used just to protect them from rain or any unwanted elements over their heads? How about those dwellings under a bridge, by ditches, contaminated creeks or river or any creative inventions poor human beings can do together with one’s family to make them a house, and in their situation make it their home? These poor folks didn’t have the opportunity to have a decent house to live in, a decent house to call their home in the same way that those fortunate folks call their house their home. It is just reasonable for them to fight for a decent housing where the government denies them. It is so unconscionable to hear the news about demolitions of these dwellings without them being given alternatives where there is reason for them to stay and live normal lives. Without those alternatives where can they find their home? Come to think about it, isn’t home a place where your own government supports and thinks about your own welfare and joyfully find you home?

For some, a home could be a place, a hometown where for some reason you strayed away from and led your life with your own hands out of nowhere that has dragged you down for so long. But for some reason you felt displaced and you felt you have to go back and find a moment of peace even for just a while. And this hometown is your home. What if in this hometown you are not welcome anymore and you felt isolated? You were denied the chance to be back in a place which you consider your home. With a heavy heart, you have to leave that place again. Where would your home be in this situation?

Home could be a place within the heart of your own family and if for some reason you lost it, you are not welcome, you’re not at home anymore. It could be a woman of your dreams and you almost come to a point to beg and asked that she takes you in her heart because her heart is your home. And if she doesn’t where will your home be? Somehow being rejected and abandoned are painful experiences that anybody may have gone through, like I went through it and I was not home with it.

I went to the Philippines recently for a vacation and as I entered through the immigration line in Manila, greetings of welcome home resonates. I went to visit my hometown where I was born and grew up but stayed in a local hotel for a few days feeling so strange that we don’t have that house where we used to live before anymore. We were just so helpless losing our house whose lands we are driven out owned by a rich and influential family. It’s a reality that it’s now gone replaced by buildings constructed for a bank and other business establishments. I was wondering where were all the other families now who were driven away from the homes of their birth. I hope and pray they are all doing fine. I missed our house full of memories of warmth and tribulations of a family we use to call home. My town mates that I used to know when I was younger are not there anymore to welcome me home. Almost all of those people I know drifted to faraway lands looking in search of a new home. However exploring around to those places I’ve been, seeing those folks I haven’t seen for a long while makes me feel comfortable, at home to say the least.

When I got back to the U.S. through the immigration line in Chicago, after a brief question and answer I was welcomed home. At this point my mind drifted in haste, just wondered to the point of being confused about me having two homes. Could this be a situation where I am like torn between two lovers? One is the place where I was born, the other where I try to fit myself in to live and work until probably to the rest of my life? It reminds me of the song “torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool, loving both of you is breaking all the rules”. Is the host country your home or the land where you were born,I wonder? Somebody asked me,"how about assimilation, duh!” And I wondered more, am I truly accepted into mainstream America as I find creative ways to be accepted trying to create a home? I suppose time will tell whichever the wind blows.

I’m now beginning to be comfortable with the thought that home to me has different and deeper meanings. It is a place where you find yourself comfortable regardless if this is a house where you stay, a hometown, at your current place, situation or condition or places you are in need of going which gives profound meaning to your being.

And I think the importance about the very idea of home is to find the center of your being. Your own home is being able to know who you are, knowing your identity out of your own crisis. And having found it, stick with that conviction, believe in it and not to be afraid to act on what you believe about who you are. Because if not, then you’ll just be a lost soul moving side to side like a pendulum sounding like tic, tac, tic, tac while the time goes by and wondering when that swinging back and forth will come to stop and your thoughts suspended about the meaning of that sound.

You’ll find home inside your heart. It is everywhere within you. Home is where you find your comfort, a steady comfort but that it also travels with you and me. It is really a comfort to know my kind of home and just as the song goes, “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger traveling on a journey through life.” #

Poem: Touchdown

A million lights glitter
on the night ground
As the plane hovers around
for a touchdown

Imagine if I could fly
I will hover around the sky
And find my spot
for a touchdown

With my feet back
on the ground
Feels good to know
I’m still around.


Pen Name: Ed Aliwalas
Date: 5/27/07, from a UA flight back to Chicago

Poem (tagalog): Sa Sinapupunan

Sa bawat hakbang
ay nag-iingat
sa bawat salita
ay pinagaaralan

Sabihin ang nararapat
ang hindi dapat
ito'y hindi sinasabi
manapa'y inililihim

Upang sa bandang huli
ang kaaway na nakaabang
mga matang nakamasid
ay di ka matukoy

Kalagayang nasa bingit
at walang kasiguruhan
habang ikaw ay
nasa sinapupunan
ng halimaw.

Pen Name: Ed Aliwalas
Date: 1/1/10 @7:30am

Beautiful Cello

I always hear the phrase “that’s music to my ears.” Music is a part of our life. It is the ingredient of the need to go on, to continue what we have and to hold onto it until we may never have the strength to be able to. And music comes in different forms, languages, genre. It comes from musical instruments that we are most familiar with and from instruments alien to us. And whether it’s warm or cold, music penetrates every pore of your skin, every core of your being.

As a musical instrument, you are a cello that looks mysterious from a distance. Why is it that I have this kind of feeling towards you, my dear cello? Are you that kind of cello that I should have but don’t have the strength to have it? Why is it at times I want to stare at you longer if I have the chance, but it looks like I won’t be able to play your strings but only look at it. Even though I want to really try sometimes to feel the notes reverberating from you, it would just have to wait. I'm like waiting for nature to unravel itself and play its course uncertain about the outcome. Would I just be satisfied looking up for time to cease looking at you, and find ways to start knowing you? Is it fear of uncertainty that if I would try to know you more the sound that would come out won’t be the ideal sound I wanted to come out? Would it be a sound that I would hate? Is it a sound that I would love? Would my playing be in unison and harmony with the sound I wanted that would come out of you? But how would I know if I don’t start knowing you now as much as I can?

I know there will be a time to confront this feeling towards you, dear cello. Guts and strength is what I needed. But I knew you have history of making music. You’ve been tried and tested by people who don’t look at you with awe from a distance nor appreciate what you are for making music. People don’t see the beauty in you and that they don’t seem to care about your feelings (as though instruments have feelings) as a musical instrument. Is it the reason why a misguided person would mistreat you? Leave you alone in that corner deserted? That person would say how much he loves you but never a hint that he would eventually hurt you for a reason? You need tender care that I wish I could take care of you and hold you to give you warmth in my arms if you will. I long to give you company at the corner of that empty room, your place, to clean away the webs and dust away from your strings and the glossy embodiment of your being.

I wish I won’t be afraid to go beyond my fear of uncertainty if I knew we would make beautiful music together. I know I have to hang in there as much as I can while I’ll be at a distance watching and appreciating you. You are a beautiful cello, a cello of someone else’s dream. From where I am, you are that cello of my musical dream. I guess the safe distance would make that relationship, like low rising, all for the love of you.

Yes, my beautiful cello, If only you knew. #

12/5/09

Crossroads

I believe that in a life of a person, one will come to a very defining moment right in front of a person's reality that he or she has to choose eventually. Somehow a critical choice has to be made to save his very last hope to move on with what one has to do with one's principles . Why am I now saying this? Why is my mind so troubled by these worries that I need myself to guard from the uncertainties that these brings? Have I gone so frustrated knowing even with all the efforts to make things work & make things better for a certain plant to grow, like a plant in the wilderness would grow, but would not happen because around this goal people doesn't seem to care and instead make it harder and worst make your efforts seem worthless?

Patience and determination are fine attributes in a person but somehow imperfection and imbalance pesters around . You go around those stumbling blocks or confront them head on. But there are times that what you want things to happen doesn't seem to be working at all. After that, frustrations seem to follow that line. And in these frustrations, consciously or not, you have to find ways to leave space in your heart unscathed. Find that strength to move on with your indigenous bagpack containing your principles and hopes in there, to go find another plant that is worth the time to water the roots. After all, it would be another specific plant from many plants around that seeks to grow. But if that time comes you find yourself in that crossroads and you seem to wonder what path to choose maybe you should not wonder at all. Instead you should not consider where the path may lead you but go instead where there is no path and go leave a trail. I know things do change, rapidly or slowly. But is that time now? I just wonder. #

11/21/09.

Bigwas

These are my answers to a non tagalog speaker who asked me:

What is Bigwas?
From a tagalog-english dictionary,Bigwas means "blow with the fist" or "strike with the fist"

What is the deeper meaning of it?
Bigwas to me, sounds more like in a "fight back" mode, like a vengeance against inaction!

Bigwas sounds like Bagwis, only in reverse?
well yes, but Bagwis from the same dictionary means "soft feathers".

Is that what this band called Bagwis means?
well no, it is the deeper meaning of the band's name which was taken from a progressive filipino song about a bird that will always find ways to seek freedom from any prison cage, it seeks a flight to freedom.

Thank you so much for the information!
thank you too, maraming salamat!