My Stargirl

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

The new trend in the boarding house now is children's books. The "uso" did not come like a flash of lightning or like how we found out about a sugar-free buko pie somewhere in Davao. It started with the plan of the student center to acquire some books that will cater to the different age level of the kids. So, my boardmates, who worked for this NGO, rushed to the nearest bookstores and book sales in Cagayan de Oro. My boardmates went home late that night and I was already asleep. Earlier that night I was not really excited for the books because I thought that they will unpack it at the center. I was more excited for a layer of Food-for-the-lesser-gods or oatmeal cookies from Ate Zeny or simply a big bag of Holy Kettle popcorn (they're the best). When I woke up that morning, I thought that I was going to do my regular starters- little did I know that our house is filled with all the children's books my boardmates bought. They were piled separately according to age levels. There was also a cardboard with words written on it- DO NOT TOUCH. From the writing, I can tell it was Ate Chean's. I love books; it's not really that I want to read every time I see one. It's something about their color, the lay-out, the smell of the pages, the spine, letterings and the pictures. Well, for that morning, I tried to "touch" all the books that I can get my hands on. There were classics like Disney movies-turned-books, fairy tales of both Andersen and the Grimm's and some young adult books. That’s when I met Jerry Spinelli and his Stargirl. The book is primarily a typical high school life in US. I may even mistake it for a high school musical (book edition). But what makes Stargirl exceptional is the writer himself. Spinelli writes with much spontaneity and creativity. Just when I thought that I will be reading another young adult novel, he somehow got some string of surprises after every chapter that kept me glued to the very last pages. Stargirl was characterized well but what I really admired was Leo- the Mr. Stargirl in the book; he is the one that narrates about Stargirl and in many ways somehow represented the larger crowd of readers including myself.

After reading the book, I thought about the things that I learned from it or as Christianity Today coined it "redemptive value". So, I thought of writing about the two things I learned from Stargirl.

First lesson, it is really okay to have a couple of weirdness in us. Aside from it makes life more exciting, it is also worth writing and hopefully worth reading. For that, I compile my "weird list".

I collect tissue papers from restaurants. My goal was to collect it from places that I have visited. In the middle part of my strange collection, some of my friends from Manila sent me tissue papers. (even from those that I’ve never heard of and worse- I’ve never been to those restaturants).

My signature is the reverse of my family name- AZALP

I don't like to put "sagos" in halo-halo.

I think that the Bear Brand 1+ (milk for one-year old kids) goes well with my Twinings Lemon and Green Tea bags.

I don't eat the bones of sardines (My boardmates find it weird but I don't feel like eating it even if I know that they are already softened or crushed after processing).

I associate people with cartoon characters (but I don’t tell it to them).

I have bookmarks but I don’t use them, I use chapters as markers when reading.

I still have my stuff toy in my closet. I had it since I was five. It didn’t have a name before. It was Nameless like Jet Li in Hero but later on I called it Yellow.

I memorize more than 50 birthdates. (but I won’t sing with a ukulele for them like Stargirl)

Second lesson, it’s really good to help people you don’t know and it feels better to help them in secret.

I once brought a bag of goodies for a beggar on the street. (I don’t usually give to beggars but during that time I was just compelled to do it- though I can’t remember the reason why I did that)

I gave somebody P1000. He didn’t know it was from me. (I called it returning the favor).

In the end, I realized that there are things that are really too small to go unnoticed in this world- but they can really make the big difference. After reading the book, I thought about how Stargirl affected the entire Mica High students and how she affected my perceptions. (which includes a porcupine necktie on my December 2007 wishlist).

Flowers Falling From the Narra Tree

Flowers Falling From the Narra Tree

I watch though this rusty gate

As the wind lightly blows through my fingertips.

Flowers, yellow, beautiful, gently fall,

Trampled by passersby on these dirty streets.

Aurora’s death, May afternoon,

Season ends with promise of return.

And Dolores’ song is on my stereo,

“Summer’s over, it’s the golden rule”, she said

And strums the guitar to a lonely fade.

Narra tree stands sturdy, tall,

With dying leaves and bloody barks.

Roots that crawl through earth and time,

A silent witness to 1970’s crimes;

But flowers will always be yellow, beautiful.

Children dance, learn spring free,

To catch and hold a petal in their hands.

I, in my childish thoughts and reverie,

Forever keep petals in my heart this day.

So, be still, spirit sublime of mine.

Flip through these glossy pages, malign!

Stare not to these staring blue eyes,

For time is harsh yet fair

To these brown hands I declare!

For soon will these indio eyes see,

When clouds shall part and darkness fall.

And I, with grains of faith in me,

Shall join the wind and fly away.

And flowers will always be yellow, beautiful

Though they’re crushed, they will always fall.

lingo

I was born in Cebu but I was not raised a Cebuano. I was raised as a Kamayo, a subgroup of the Mandaya tribe. We, however, are typical lowland people who at some point have been colonized by the Spaniards in the southeastern part of Mindanao. My grandmother was a native of the town while my grandfather was an extranjero who was a product of intermarriages of Filipinos and Spaniards. The Mandaya culture in our town is slowly forgotten now. I think it has something to do with the past influences of the foreign settlers plus the inevitable effects of neo-colonialism. But there is one thing that is preserved from my tribal roots and that is the language of the town which we call as Kinamayo or simply Kamayo. It’s a language which I can speak since my toddler years.

When I turned six, I was trained to speak Cebuano. I had to learn the language because I was sent to a La Salle school in a distant town of Cebuano-speaking people. When I entered kindergarten, I had to live in a boarding house during school days together with my ten-year old brother. With this set-up, I have to speak mostly Cebuano during weekdays and Kamayo when I went home on weekends. It would had been hard for me to converse with my Visayan classmates, if not for a summer vacation that we had in Cebu before the opening of the school. My parents told me that I was able to adjust to the vernacular in just a short period of time. But Cebuano was not the only dialect that my classmates spoke, there were also influences of Ilonggo and Tagalog. It was because of a paper company which brought people from the other islands to settle in the town. Luckily, Tagalog is no longer that new to me because my father uses this dialect during those months that he would stay with us before going back to the ship. My father was an OFW. He was not a pure Tagalog though; he spoke a different dialect called Cantilanon, (which I can also speak but not that fluently). He said that Filipino becomes the language on the ship when they are overseas.

In college, I was sent to Iligan. Although Iliganons mostly speak Cebuano, my studying became an avenue to interact with the Muslim people. I have a cousin that once studied in Marawi City and when she went home on semestral breaks she would share to us some of her recently learned Maranaw phrases. As I would be listening to her talk, the foreign words would somehow bridge the gap of Muslims and Christians, and strip down all my prejudices. Growing-up, I never had close encounters with the Muslim people and I thought that if I can learn their language then I can relate more to them and to their culture. Unfortunately, I graduated from college learning only two Maranao words- mapiya(good) and oway(yes). It was because the boarding house that I stayed in college was flocked mostly with Surigaonons and so I was more influenced with these guys from Surigao City. I can also express in their language and enjoyed borrowing some of their jolly expressions.

In my work now, I am only required to speak two languages- Java and C. Although programming languages are not meant to be spoken, in my profession I have to verbalize their syntax and semantics. Our common conversations in the class would go like-“I’ve placed an empty System.out.println already in the loop” or “Maybe you have to check if you placed an ampersand on your scanf again” or “Are you sure your class instantiation is right because your constructor and method invocations won’t work?”. I remember when I had my first lessons in programming and my professor would talk about this computer terms, then I thought to myself- he is speaking French again. Now that I’m teaching these concepts to my students, they would sometimes cast a blank look at me, as if their heads have big question marks over them and cloud callouts that write- he’s speaking gibberish again.

I can recall one of my discussions on language. With ideas from Morris Mano, I explained to my class that words are just juxtaposition of discrete elements of information that represents a quantity of information. For example, discrete elements such as letters r, e and d form the word red. Thus, a sequence of discrete elements forms a language, that is, a discipline that conveys information. That is how I defined language before and now as I look back at some parts of my life I realized that language has created a different meaning to me. It has greatly affected my decisions and lifestyle. In many times, language became either a barrier or a bridge in wherever the wind brought me.

This morning, I passed by that poster found along the corridors of the school again. It was a scholarship grant offered in Japan. I talked to my mom about it and her only advice was that I should go for it while I’m still young. It is not really on my priority list right now but I must say that I’m considering it. And so I stopped to read the poster again. The requirement section states that aside from my credentials, I have to learn Japanese.