________________________________________________ THE ESSENTIAL FILIPINO take two THE GYPSY GIRL – Author’s note. THE ESSENTIAL FILIPINO take one DISCOVERING DREAMS, the original, which was published March 2010, drawing a lot of Internet reactions, is also given below. – to nomads and wanderers the best way to fight violence is with a calm peaceful spirit – to nomads and wanderers material survival is peripheral spiritual survival is essential – It was rush hour. I was riding a jeepney in Alabang. A young girl, about 15 years old, hopped in. She had dirty clothes and un-shamppoeed hair. She gave an envelope to each passenger, now a new trend in begging. It was better than the hard-sell stretching of a hand. When a passenger did not accept the envelope, she simply put it on his or her lap. I found that irritating and rude. To avoid getting the envelope, I waved my hand and gave a non-verbal facial expression to show my disgust. She just smiled, turned away, and finally sat behind the driver. – She sang a strange song softly, hardly audible in the din of traffic. But I knew from the tune that she was a red-blooded sea gypsy of the Badjao tribe. I have been to their area as a journalist. They come from remote islands in Southern Palawan and the Sulu sea, the backdoor to Borneo. Extreme poverty has forced the Badjaos to the big cities hundreds of kilometers away to beg. Badjao children swim in the violent swirl of giant ships maneuvering in urban ports to dive for coins thrown by passengers. – The driver cursed and shouted at her to get out of the jeepney. He hit the steering wheel violently in anger, and made a move as if to go down and drag her out just to scare her. The girl simply smiled, not embarrassed, and stood her ground. She was used to being treated that way in the cities. Her gentle spirit was beyond the reach of the angry driver. No one could hurt her unless she willed it. The cruel outside world was at the tips of her finger. She stopped singing out of respect for the angry driver. She had no grudge against him. The angrier the driver, the calmer she became. No one could touch her soul. The other passengers looked at her with amazement. My irritation instantly turned into awe. – Finally she stood up. I frantically searched for a coin and found a five peso piece. I gave it to the Princess of the Sulu Sea, no envelope. She hardly looked at me and simply nodded slightly to show her thanks. Other passengers started filling up the envelope with coins. It was a big haul, if I may say. One old lady gave her a twenty peso paper bill, a jackpot for a beggar. The driver did her a big favor. – And so it was that thoughts lingered as I walked home. I had done extensive research on Badjaos years ago. Together with the Agtas of the Cordilleras, they were the last remnants of a vanishing race of pure nomads, people who have not shed off their wanderlust. They are the Filipino’s ancient forgotten heritage. The Agtas were the nomads of the mountains. The Badjaos were the nomads of the sea. The Princes was the nomad of the city. – I saw the glint of wanderlust in the Princess eyes. I could sense her adventure spirit. She could not have come here hundreds of kilometers from where she came from without money if she was not adventurous. Badjao children normally stow away in crowded passenger ships. In a sense, she was caught between two forces, two conflicting worlds – her spiritual world of nomadic hunter-gatherer survival and the material world of income survival she knew nothing about. – Among the Eskimos of the Aleutian islands, the nomads of the icy tundras, survival dictated that the first to eat were the hunters right in the kill zone. They got the best part of the still-warm meat and ate it raw and bloody. Among the Badjaos of the Sulu Sea, the survival logic was the exact opposite. The hunters were the last to eat the fish catch, after the women and children had their fill. For the Princess, survival was pooling all they could beg for among her small group into an evening banquet of rice and, say, almost rotten tomatoes with salt. They live for the day. Long term meant a week and they do not even think of that. One step at a time, that was how they survived. – The Badjaos were so peaceful that if warlike Tausugs or Samals encroached on their turf, they simply left. I saw this in the Princess when confronted by the violent driver. The Badjaos valued peace and freedom more than the land. They will not fight for it. They had no sense of territory because their ancestors were bred for eons by vast unchartered seas. Now that the world was getting crowded, they have not adopted to territory and are in crisis. They roam freely forever and become victims of crowdedness. They have no place to go, yet they like it that way, even though they have become extremely poor in a crowded world of settlers. The material world was peripheral to their spiritual survival. – Badjaos live in makeshift houseboats. In Sitangkay, a tiny island close to Borneo, they run during a storm to the ‘safety’ of their boats rather than the safety of the land. The only time they stay on land was to bury their dead and to play basketball in the courts of the Christian settlers. The Princess, I would surmise, huddles with a small group of her kind in the empty dark sidewalks behind the big mall. I see them there sometimes. – Once I asked a Badjao boatman how long it would take to get to our island destination. He dipped his hand into the sea, feeling how strong the current was, then pointed to the sky, something like 2 p.m. I guessed. Crude but ingenious celestial and ocean-tide navigation. Pure nomadic wisdom. – Anthropologists have gained little headway in learning about the Badjao mystique. They are hard to educate or influence. They are not really stubborn, only different in the way they view the world. They are children of the universe. – There are valuable lessons the Princess gives us in our extremely materialistic world of cellphones and computers, of anger and violence. The Princess is a beautiful girl inside with a radiant smile, a soft song, a peaceful spirit money cannot buy. Do not be fooled by the external, by her dirty dress or un-shampooed hair. She is a Princess. We just have to somehow understand her. – in our superiority complex we want to educate ancient people about civilized society we forget that they can educate us in their ancient wisdom – – THE ESSENTIAL FILIPINO part one discovering dreams (prayer31 in http://www.sisterraquel.com) – _________________________________________ you must empty your cup so He can fill it you must give away your riches so He can enrich you – a british journalist breezed into manila with an assignment to write about ‘the essential filipino’ he smiled confidently over his easy assignment relishing the free tour as complementary reward – for three days, he ran around searching he rejected the business district of makati which reminded him of cold and calculating london he went to historical places in intramuros but saw only a glimpse of the past not the present – next he tried the native cuisine at market market delicious yes, but nothing on the essential filipino he was getting not only tired but also nervous that he has not found his ‘easy’ story yet time was running out, he had to go back in two days – he wasted the next day on inconsequential probes into malls, churches, monuments on his last day, he wrote his editor saying that no one can possibly write about the essential filipino in so short time, he asked for an extension – he was expecting a week, the editor was kind but he was given only one lousy day extension in desperation and panic, on his last day he took a wild stab at marketplaces in singalong, he sat on a curb too tired to think – then he realized his mistake he was looking for places not people the thought hit him like a terrorist’s bomb the essential filipino was a person not a place how stupid could he be, he thought – sitting on the curb in exasperation he began looking at faces that passed by he noticed a boy selling fishballs from a rolling cart he had a torn shirt and was barefoot what attracted him was not the fishballs – the boy gyrated like michael jackson unmindful of the noisy crowd around him the journalist approached him noticing the earphones he wore he instantly realized it was loud music – music that drowned the noise and transported the boy into his inner garden the journalist had to scream in order to bring him back into the real world the boy removed the earphones – ***************** – JOURNALIST Hey, what are you doing? – BOY Fishballs, sir, wanna buy? – JOURNALIST Nice earphones, huh? – THE BOY GIVES THE EARPHONES TO THE JOURNALIST, WHO PUTS THEM ON. HE INSTANTLY REMOVES IT, ALMOST FALLING FROM THE DEFEANING ROCK MUSIC. THE BOY SMILES AND PUTS THEM BACK ON. – JOURNALIST Hey, wait, we’re talking. – THE BOY REMOVES THE EARPHONES AND HANDS HIM THE TINY MP3 PLAYER FROM HIS POCKET. THE JOURNALIST EXAMINES IT. – JOURNALIST Where did you get this? This is expensive, first-class mp3 player with first-class earphones. They don’t match your air-conditioned shirt. – HE FLICKS THE HOLE IN HIS SHIRT. – BOY I saved income from selling fishballs for one whole year just to buy that. Nice huh? – JOURNALIST Why don’t you buy a new shirt and shoes? – BOY No need. Not important. Waste of hard earned money. Clothes don’t make me happy, only music. – JOURNALIST You kill yourself selling fishballs the whole day for a year just to buy those? – BOY Why not? What would you buy? What is your dream? Me, this is my dream, but it is no longer a dream. It’s real now. I don’t need shirts and shoes, just a dream of dancing to music. What is your dream anyway? – AT FIRST, THE JOURNALIST IS AT A LOSS FOR WORDS BECAUSE HE REALLY HAS NO ‘DREAM’ IN MIND, OR PERHAPS HIS DREAM IS TO FILE A STORY, THAT IS ALL, BUT THAT IS NOT REALLY A ‘DREAM’. A DREAM MUST BE SPIRITUAL AND FOREVER, AS IMPLIED IN THE BOY’S WORDS. – JOURNALIST I guess I have no dream. Or yes I have a dream but it is not a good dream. – BOY Too bad. You must be very sad. Buy yourself an mp3. – JOURNALIST But that is not my dream. – BOY So what is your real dream. There must be something you really really like. – JOURNALIST I have been working so hard to survive that I forget what I really really like. My life is work work work. – BOY But I also work work work. You must find your true dream and go for it. – ****************** – and so the british journalist was beginning to discern the essential filipino he was amazed how in his dire poverty the boy rejected the very materialism that was gradually destroying affluent society – the essential filipino was a free spirit who was poor and happy all at once perhaps it came from his insular environment or from his distant past, his austronesian roots of nomads in tiny boats roaming the vast seas – the journalist took out a notebook and started writing frantically the boy peered into his writing, trying to read and said aloud ‘essential filipino … free spirit spiritual dreams … nomadic boat people … – ***************** – BOY (Grabbing the notebook.) I know this is your dream. You just don’t know it. What you write here is your dream. – JOURNALIST (Stunned at the boy’s perception.) I … I … I guess so. – BOY It is not a guess. You know it. Once you know your dream, you must go for it, or else you will be very sad and soon you will die because you know you have no more reason to live for. You must go for a dream or die. You cannot live just to live, can you? – JOURNALIST Guess not. Thank you for telling me my dream. – ALMOST IN TEARS, THE JOURNALIST HUGS THE BOY AND GIVES HIM A HUNDRED PESO BILL. THE BOY IS STUNNED. – BOY What for? – JOURNALIST Because you help me find my dream that was right in front of my nose all this while. – BOY Yes, you cannot see things that are too near. You have to move back to see. – JOURNALIST Go, buy yourself more music. – ********************** – it took thirty minutes for the journalist to write his story at his hotel in ten electronic milliseconds the story was at the editor’s desk the editor replied – ‘this is the best story yet for a long time our staff writers write about absurd things what you wrote is an important wisdom for the affluent world from the impoverished world stay there for a month and write me more’ – the journalist had a field day his dream, like the boy, was now a reality he would hang around with street vendors later, he moved to the countryside and wrote about the wisdom of farmers and fishermen – he immersed himself in the essential filipino poor, happy, equipped with a different kind of wisdom unknown in the affluent world he married a kalinga native and wrote a book a best seller entitled ‘discovering dreams’ – it was a poorlittlerichboy selling sticks of fishballs for six US cents each which ignited his soul the essential filipino whose ancient wisdom was hard to find in civilized places he knew – eastwind – _________________________________________ where goodness abounds there also is evil lurking to sow confusion and hatred – where evil abounds there also is virtue lurking to sow harmony and peace – the tension between good and evil is everywhere we perpetrate one or the other the destiny of the world is up to each of us – _________________________________________ mahatma gandhi’s principle of non-violence revolves around the concept that – – peace is a more powerful weapon than war a smile is more powerful than a sneer a whisper is louder than a scream the calm is in the eye of the storm and total darkness recedes when a single candlelight glows – _________________________________________ we pedestal great men, creating semi-gods like michael jackson and john lennon not knowing the fame and fortune we bestow would devour their spirits and consume them totally – of what use is the tall pedestal men tell us to scale when we would grow into giants and fall with a resounding crash – better to be a happy unknown ant than a sad noted giant there is virtue in anonymity and folly in popularity – –
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