writing words

I tell my students to write. Write any words you know. Any words you see. Any words you feel.  Any words you smell and hear. Any words you don’t yet know.  “Just write. And be amazed by the intricacies of life your soul perceives.  Live in awe of the worlds your mind crafts. And most of all never stop writing. Your song needs to be written for the histories you will be creating.  Your words are the one thing no one can steal. They are the translation of your thoughts and revelations of truth.  Words resuscitate your lungs with air to breath, air to speak, air to think, air to love. Without words you are a robot forgetting the gift of humanity and the power you posses. Weave words through every ounce of your being until every heartbeat is a word forever engrained as a piece of your story.”  And then they write and they dance and they laugh and they cry and they dream and they fear and they grow angry and they desire and they struggle and they hope and they are blessed and they know and they question and they love.  I can only hope they will never forget their words, and I pray that in days yet to come they reread their stories and find themselves to be real.  Capable of transforming the world, they are real just as every person is real. 

And some say, “but ma’am, I don’t know how to write.”

And to them I ask, “what do you see outside?”

And one replies:

It’s a strange sky out there. The clouds are threatening rain. The brids are preparing for the storm. They are making noise. Warning noises.  They are flying for safety.

And another replies:

The sky is growling and dark, but we will be safe in here.  It’s beautiful when it storms because everything is silent before it gets loud.  And the leaves on the trees blow but they still stand tall and strong.  The birds are safe in the trees. 

“Do you like the storms?” I ask.

A student answers:

yes ma’am.  They are powerful and beautiful.  but sometimes they scare me because they are too powerful and they destroy my father’s crops.  And ma’am, it’s so sad when that happens because we have no money, and sometimes my brother’s and I have no lunch.  But the storms make my heart beat fast as if I’m in a race about to win.  And I like when my heart beats like that.

Another student says:

No, I do not like storms.  My grandmothers house was blown away in a storm and my grandfather is dead and she is too weak to build a new house.  Ma’am it is so sad.  But I guess I do like them sometimes. When they don’t ruin the houses.  I like them then because they water the fields and fill the wells.  That is a good thing ma’am. 

And some say, “ma’am hindi puede sumulat ako ng English.”

And I ask, “are you speaking right now?”

And they reply, “yes, ma’am.”

And I ask, “what are you speaking?”

And they reply, “tagalog.”

And I ask, “is tagalog a language?”

And they laugh, “of course ma’am.”

And I ask, “what are languages made of?”

“Words ma’am.”

“You say, words?”

“Yes, of course ma’am.”

“hmmm. So can you write words of the Filipino language?”

And they laugh again, “Ma’am, of course we can.”

“Sige.  Words are words. Every language has words, and every language needs to be spoken and honored and heard and written and expressed.  There is no hierarchy of language.  No language that should be heard more than others.  All language has value and all languages need to be celebrated.  Be proud of the words you have.  Make your own words.  Just use words and know that they are yours and they can be shared to help other people.”

And some say, “ma’am I don’t know the words in even Tagalog to say what I want to say.”

“do you dance?” I ask.

“I love to dance,” one responds.”

“do you sing?”

“yes ma’am. I am a very good singer.”

“do you watch the clouds float through the sky?”

“I do,” one hesitant student says.

“Do you cry?”

“No ma’am. Never.  But sometimes.  Only sometimes though. But mostly no,” and the class laughs.

“Do you laugh?”

“Always ma’am.”

“Do you dream in colors?”

“I like to dream ma’am.”

“Do you get scared or happy or sad or angry or filled with such a good or bad feeling that no words can describe it?”

“yes ma’am.  That’s what I mean. I can’t describe it.”

“But, you know you feel it?” I press.

“I think so.”

“I think you know so.  And that knowing is true. And that knowing needs to be felt. And that knowing is the greatest language you could ever hear.  It contains the most powerful words the world has ever known, because those are the words that compel action. Actions that sometimes hurt people and actions that sometimes strengthen people. Actions that dictate the events of the world.  Those are the words you must never forget.  Those are the words that you will be the first to hear, and the one to interpret their meaning. Those are the words that will determine what you do with your life and who you share your life with.”

The storm rolls in and the trees begin to chant. 

“What are the words of the trees right now?”

One student replies, “ they are waiting for a fight.  Ready to defend the birds against the wind.”

Another student says, “but that one over there is just standing straight and tall. Not blowing.  Just accepting the wind and rain.”

A different student rises to say .”I think that baby tree is crying because it is so small and weak and the storm seems so big.  But, it doesn’t know yet the storm will leave and it doesn’t see that it will be able to live through the storm.”

A student interjects, “I see a tree dancing ma’am! It’s happy. It’s singing and dancing and is showering in the rain. It looks so elegant and graceful.” 

“ma’am I’m sad for that tree,” a student says pointing to a tree affected by a parasite of some sort.”

Why?” I ask.

“It is mourning. It is being hurt in the wind and it isn’t strong enough to keep its’ leaves.  Its’ skin is falling off.  It is giving up. It is accepting death.”

“So, every tree is expressing different words right now?”

“Of course ma’am because no two trees are the same one tree.”

“And each of you hear the words of different trees?”

“Maybe ma’am.”

“Interesting.”

“What is interesting ma’am?”

“Do any two of you have the same words? The same stories?”

“No ma’am, we are not the same person as our other classmates,” they say as if this is a new and fragile discovery for me.

“So, what will happen if one of you doesn’t write your words? Or what happens if we only listen to the words from a few of you?”

“That would be sad ma’am.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know ma’am.  It would just make my heart hurt.”

After a few seconds of silence a student stands to say, “it is sad like the kind of sad with no words.  How sad to not see one of the trees and never know the story.”

shantaram

I recently read the novel Shantaram.  I don’t know how to explain it any other way than saying so much of its words resonated deep within me.  I may have liked it so much because it described some places that I have seen, and a culture I’m progressively more and more interested in.  Or, maybe so many of the philosophies discussed are thoughts I’ve been having over the last few years but I’ve been unable to articulate them as eloquently as the author. It’s almost like he wrote about his life just so I would have the words to express my perceptions and beliefs.  Or, it’s even possible, that I just fell in love with the author and his courageous honesty.  He observes everything and notices every person with beautiful detail.  The moral of the story is, I highly recommend the book, but if you never get the chance to read it here are a few of the quotes that really struck me.

p.s. Shantaram means “Man of God’s peace.”

“The soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no color or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one.” 

“There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception.  We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay.  It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart.”

 “Ask any man with a long enough experience of prisons, and he’ll tell you that all it takes to harden a man’s heart is a system of justice.”

“The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone—the noblest man alive or the most wicked—has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus fold s of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”

“[true] justice is not only the way that we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

“The surest way to hurt someone you like, is to put all your trust in him.”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have—to hold on tight until the dawn.”

“It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species wouldn’t annihilate itself in endless retribution. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without htat dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey.  Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”

“Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him.  That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.”

“Cruelty is a kind of cowardice. Cruel laughter is the way cowards cry when they’re not alone and causing pain is how they grieve.”

“The worst things that people do to us always make us feel ashamed. The worst things that people do always strike at the part of us that wants to love the world. And a tiny part of the shame we feel, when we’re violated, is shame at being human.”

“We are never perfectly objective about anything, that is true, but we can be less objective, or we can be more objective.  And when we define good and evil on the basis of what we know—to be the best of our knowledge at a present time—we are being as objective as possible within the imperfect limits of our understanding.”

“At the moment, most of our ways of defining the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details. So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them. And everybody who is involved in the killing says that he has God on his side.  There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of others.” 

“Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.”

“Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships. We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.” 

“Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often, and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbeat.  We know that crying is a good and natural thing.  we know that crying isn’t a weakness, but a kind of strength.  Still, the weeping rips us root by untangled root from the earth and we crash like fallen trees when we cry.” 

“You can’t kill love.  you can’t even kill it with hate.  You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or number them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own, and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.  Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.”

 “When you know you’re going to die, there’s no comfort in cleverness. Genius is vain, and cleverness is hollow, at the end. The comfort that does come, if it comes at all, is that strangely marbled mix of time and place and feeling that we usually call wisdom.”

“There’s only courage and fear and love. And war kills them all, one by one.  Glory belongs to God, of course; that’s what the word [glory] really means. And you can’t serve God with a gun.”

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus thread.  Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag is behind us as we struggle to go on.  But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance.”

“Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow.”

“Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.”

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more.  Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing, the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on.  God help us. God forgive us. We live on.” 

funerals and social observations

When we first arrived in the Philippines we spent a week in an introductory training. A lot of volunteers talked to us about what we could expect as far as cultural integration etc. Without fail almost all mentioned how many weddings we would be going to.  It’s now been several months and I have yet to go to a wedding, but I have been to numerous funerals.  So many funerals. At least one or two a week.  I’ve been in countries ravished by killing diseases like AIDS, TB, malaria or cholera, but my island doesn’t suffer from any of those, yet death is an ever present part of my life here. 

I have yet to see a person cry at a funeral or viewing. As far as I have heard and observed most Filipinos don’t like to express emotion that makes them appear anything other than perfectly happy and content, but it still surprises me every time I arrive at a funeral.  When a person dies his/her body is kept in the house for seven to ten days and guests can come pay their respects.  Often during these times I try to sit back and observe, although I’m frequently given one of the chairs closest to the body as my skin color and nationality are held in high regard.  I feel many times that I am the most expressively solemn, but you can always see in the eyes of the most immediate family member that their snack giving and their laughing doesn’t completely let them escape from their loss. 

There’s so much I’m trying to learn and understand, but here are some of my observations up till this point in time.

The diet here is not particularly healthy, and by that I mean it’s terribly unhealthy.  Diabetes, high blood, and heart disease seem to affect at least 1/3 of every family unit, and have also been the causes of too many of the funerals I’ve attended. People can’t afford medications and/or surgeries so there are few chances for improvement or even stabilization once a person has been diagnosed with one of these diseases. 

Once a person dies, their body is sealed in a casket. The casket remains open for viewing but there is a layer of glass protecting the body, and all the caskets I have seen are white.  The body is displayed in the main room of the house.  There is a white alter-like thing that holds the casket and there are large candle sticks in front of the caskets with thick white candles.  Behind the caskets are gold lamp posts, the kind of lamp posts you see in winter wonderland Christmas village sets, and below the alter-like stand is a carpet no matter if the floor is a mud floor or a tiled floor.  On the open lid of the casket is the name of the deceased as well as the names of their children. These are usually printed from a computer and then cut out and pasted on colored paper. Across the top of the casket is a verse from the Bible printed and showcased in a similar manner, but in a larger and bolder font.  There are a row of chairs facing the casket.  Near the door way is a podium with a box for donations to help pay for funeral expenses as well as a board of some sort displaying the name, birth date, and the date of death of the deceased man or woman.  Outside the entrance of the house are many more chairs for visitors. 

Men usually sit and drink and gamble with the other men, while the women pass out snacks and sit and catch up on chika chika with each other.  Sometimes there will be a  videoke machine to occupy the children and drunk men.   It seems there are a group of people that are always present (maybe closer family relatives) and then other people that just stop by to pay their respects. The people who stop by look at the casket, and when they look at the body beneath the glass they have a different expression than the people I’ve seen in the U.S. look at a body in the casket.  It seems to have less grief and it seems that many people like to look to see how good or bad the body looks.  It’s almost like an artifact in a museum (that’s just my read of the expressions) and then they leave the room and sit down and wait until the immediate family of the deceased brings them a snack.  The snacks are usually Pop Cola, Fudgee Bars, Tang-like drinks in pouches, ice-cream, or other chip-like snacks.  I have watched dozens of people come, look at the body, eat their snack, throw their wrappers on the floor or on an empty chair and then leave.  I never see hugging or hear comments of support. The teachers at my school all go together to funerals that are for family members of a student or other teacher and when this happens the day is cut short so I hear comments of excitement that the work day will be shortened and afterwards I hear more commentary on the snacks provided by the family than on the concern for the family members.  The family hosting the funeral/the family of the deceased is expected to clean and do all the dishes.  Anytime I’ve offered help I’ve been told by non-family members that it’s the families job to do it. 

I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. It’s just a different thing than I’m used to.  Actually, many social interactions are very intriguing to me.  For instance, a couple weeks ago I was told my host-dads sister would be coming by. Her first time to visit in many months.  So I thought her and her family might spend the night or at least spend a couple hours here. My host mom and host sisters prepared a big marienda of pancit and all day we were waiting for them.  When the sister arrived, her friends and family ate the pancit and then they left. They stayed for maybe thirty minutes after not seeing each other for several months, and it was the first time my host sisters met their new baby cousin.  But, it’s not that the two families have a bad relationship, and my host family was very glad they stopped and they talked about how nice it was to see the sister. It’s just different than I’m used to.

Today was my first barangay fiesta.  During a barangay fiesta you travel to the different houses in that barangay and they are supposed to feed you. each house makes a huge  variety of different meats and you visit as many houses as you can in one day.  I traveled around with my supervisor, and never did we ask how anyone was or have a conversation about anything other than the fiesta iself and the food.  Again, it’s not bad, but it’s very different than the parties and family gatherings I’m used to. 

Back, to the problem with Diabetes etc.  I absolutely love the pastor’s family of my host family’s church.  I feel very comfortable with them, and like my host family, they have welcomed me regardless of any of my weird American habits or bizarre personal characteristics.  They are truly kind people who really care about the people in their lives.  When I came back from a new years trip to bagio several people asked me how my trip was.  I told everyone the same story. Two of my friends had dengue fever and one had hepatitis so we spent a lot of time in the hospital.  Only three groups of people asked how they were doing: my host family, another family that I spend a lot of time with, and the pastor’s family.  I think again it’s just part of the culture not to ask questions but I was surprised that no one else asked how they were doing considering both of those diseases are deadly. But, that level of intimacy, of knowing how the people of someone’s life are doing, demonstrates just how close I feel to this family.

Last night my host mom got a text from the pastor’s wife.  I’ve helped with a few minor injuries (and by minor I mean really minor like wasp stings and burns and rashes) and small sicknesses for a few people, and somehow word made its’ way to the pastor.  He has severe diabetes and was loosing feeling in his foot. It was greatly swollen and was difficult for him to walk on. Because he can’t afford the proper medical treatment (either insulin or the amputation to a few toes I’m sure he needs) he went to a “clinic” on my island and had a surgery performed by someone who isn’t really a doctor.  The surgery made things worse and his foot is now terribly infected.  The pain is too great to stand on, but he needs to stand on it for several hours each day.  He is a school teacher and is required to go to school every day. If he misses a day he doesn’t get paid, and if he misses a day of pay he won’t be able to feed his family.  So, without option, he stands on it, which only intensifies the problems. 

Back to last night.  My host mom got a text asking if there was anything I could do for it. I don’t have penicillin and I don’t have nearly enough knowledge to know how to handle the infection.  If I were to make a guess I would say that he needs to have the foot reopened and have the infection cleaned up, but I don’t know.  It was such a moment of helplessness. There is nothing I can do and day after day the people in his life watch his pain become greater and greater.  I talked to his wife the other day and she said that today they would go to the nearest city and have a doctor look at it.  I’m still waiting to hear what the doctor has to say.  Maybe a surgery was performed, maybe a prescription was written, but I know that this won’t be the end of his problems concerning the medication he needs costs at least 8,000 pesos a month.  When I heard this price I couldn’t believe it.  this is more than a months salary for a majority of the people on my island. Sometimes the injustices of life seem overwhelming.  Why is healthcare so expensive? Why do multinational corporations take advantage of the poor (research the importation of fatty processed foods from developed countries to developing countries as well as companies like DOLE and their influence on the nutrition of the countries they grow produce)?  Why is it so difficult to teach that saving 5 pesos a day for an emergency medical fund instead of spending it on cookie crunch is a good decision for so many reasons?  There are so many tragic things about so many of the systems we have established, and while the systems aren’t human the individuals who are affected by them are.