The reason why I took a leap of faith and started to write is a mystery to me as well. Sometime I believe or imagine, like for example I got mad at the 16M, but now the anger has dissipated, replaced by pity and guilt.
Pity, since when I peered in much closer to the reasons or cause/s of that phenomenon, I start to pity them for they had been so used to being used by unscrupulous people. I pity them for they cannot decipher sincerity, truth, and attain wider perspectives. They're like the seemingly malnutrition mongrels in Ermita, laboriously pulling a kart, a kalesa, adorned with trinkets that defines my race, a Filipino. Those poor mighty animals, of the horse mustang species, are the respected partners of Native Americans when they fought with their invaders as the warrior's extension, but in Manila they're sporting directional tapers adjacent to both eyes, so they could only see what its driver directs them to see. I pity the blind, ignorant and poor Filipinos.
When you take a step back from that deplorable view of what our fellow Filipinos have become, you will suddenly be enveloped by a soul jolting guilt for not doing anything. You'd realize that they are your mothers and fathers, uncles, aunties, friends, peers, your little sisters and brothers, sons and daughters - your family, neighbors, and acquaintance. You are responsible for them as much as they are for you by sharing this society virtually of one race, with the brown man category. When you're very sure you can do something, yet you choose to procrastinate, to hesitate, to ignore - to abandon.
You and we are surrounded by kins who can't even speak the English language, much more to comprehend it. We have been graded with youths having the lowest IQ in the world by academicians, where they found out that most high school students in Quezon City, just adjacent to the country's capital, can't even read. I couldn't piece together why the Filipino writers insists to break into the International Market or readers and ignore teaching, ignore helping his struggling society. We writers and progressives should stand up and bear that responsibility of being torch bearers and the light-bringers to our lost brethren.
Dominantly a pro-Roman catholic race of benevolent people, however, these lovely creatures of mixed races includes the first inhabitants of the land, the Moros. They originated from the Malay race that expanded and migrated out in our distant past. They settled in the southern part of the group of islands. They, of the Islam faith started and invigorated trade from land and mostly from the sea, they traded with Japan, India, China, and Singapore. They fought against invaders brought by the sea, and defeated Ferdinand Magellan, in turn preserving their culture, traditions and religion. The Northerners however was influenced with Catholicism, progressive ideas, luxury and cultures from invaders coming from the Western Hemisphere, like Spain, England and the United States.
The poor just keeps multiplying in this society of hypocrisy, twisted morality and of ignorance. The main reasons for mass migrations are poverty, opportunities and security. Displacements can occur daily to and from the cluster of islands. For example, neighboring occupants of neighboring countries migrated into Philippines, Minor races decided to clump up together and form their own diaspora. Such races were the Chinese and Islamic moros, where social racism were simply explained in a hierarchy of economic measurements, or a form of oligarchy. Those of Chinese or Sino descent became the heads of businesses mostly in the North, where the uneducated and under privileged ended up as employees of the latter. The Moros, more often than not, are compared to the Jewish Gypsies of early Europe, like the Sinos of the North they integrated all throughout the archipelago from the utmost Southern island and formed their own ethnic diaspora all over the archipelago including the nation's capital. This are the people we shall follow.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates ventured into the downfall of societies where Timocracy and Oligarchy is followed by Democracy where people are almost always doomed with dominantly ignorant masses. This has been the inherent and attached characteristics of societies. In my opinion, a great deal of time and therefore wisdom had been accumulated by mankind since the Athenian philosophers, surely by now and with that supposed wisdom from the expanse of time, we can formulate solutions and find ways to change the inevitable and avoid that usual predicament with the advent of technology and communication through internet, then how come people cannot realize that it is easier to educate and elucidate the dominantly ignorant masses? In this time and age, I believe that the dilemmas of ideology and education can now be resolved.
At one time, I imagined launching the novel as a collaborative product by other writers for an "infinity novel about Pinoys", dreamed and day-dreamed it would go on forever, like a poem that never runs out of rhyme, like the stories from Philippine legends and lore passed on from generation to generation, like those cultures that inspires all young Filipinos to become dreamers. I realized that it was an impossible enterprise, so I continued chapter two. I was so pleased after I finished the second installment that I reverted back to being a stereotype of authoring it completely, for such a story shouldn't wait for the writers to come.
I was able to conceive of another opportunity to collaborate with other gifted Pinoys – A mini-novel series for the "Ang Kabataan Ngayon" or "Kabataan", featuring the other mysterious and exciting adventures of Amihan and her group of youths, the protagonist heroine established from Chapter 2, along with other progressive youths who just graduated from the same Public High School, where all our societies' future are at stake at present. Mark the prodigy, the twins Clei and Cloe (the Enigma Decoders) and self-taught programmers, the athlete and martial arts expert Rex, and Rogelio, the protagonist's future love interest. It could be an opportunity for young writers to try out the genre, and most importantly teach and inspire other youths. These mini-novels shall be preferably and predominantly written in contemporary Tagalog or Taglish with the objective of attracting the youths in the marginalized sectors, those that need our attention and help, to start reading and start opening their minds. Perhaps we can save some lost youths in the marginalized sector by re-inspiring them. A succinct and less dramatized Kabataan adventure is featured in Chapter 10.
This novel was initially written in Taglish, or a mixture of English words integrated into the literature, storytelling, conversations, metaphors and prose. Our young writers should start writing, they took out the Pilipino Subject in all schools several months back, and they are now teaching Chinese to our school teachers, the Pinoy's native vernacular, being murdered farther from a catatonic state to being killed, EJKed like most Pinoys in the margins of poverty during the War on Drugs of the current government's Administration.
Where there's music, there should always be love nearby. Era music is featured sporadically in the narrative as a signal that the reader is taken to a certain time in local history. I would make it a point to insert the love and romance elements right after those time markers. Book One would be a casual presentation of events and scenes describing and defining the various characters, where the reader can get acquainted with the characters vis-a-vis the blossoming of the plot and sub-plots. Book Two would have a more linear timeline. The first chapter of this novel was published first in the Facebook group page Sining para sa mga Sumasala (SPASMS) on March of 2017. SPASMS is earmarked as a magazine, to be specific, a table top magazine which would be given free to the families in the marginalized sector.
Follow the origin stories of the arch enemies Red and Sugo ni Kamatayan. Salivate on the utility gizmos and tools of "Kabataan" and the military grade gadgets of Overwatch. I was asked by my publisher to either write something in English or translate this book, the reason why we both ended-up here.
Now that I got you hooked reading this far. It's time for me to confess my sins. This volume is not an exact translation from the First version of "Ang Nobela ng mga Bukas". For adding to the original, please forgive me.
Buhawi N.M.A.