The Other Half Of Me

THE OTHER HALF OF ME

By Blanca Datuin

(in memory of Wilfrido D. Nolledo, author of But for the Lovers)

Beneath this mound of soil

lies the other half of me,

in wait for this self

still walking the ground

trekked together before, but

now dotted with only a pair of footprints.

I lay the roses upon the tombstone

in a ritual of love, and pray:

please God let him who loved

you continue to love you,

and you who loved him in his life

continue to love him evermore.

I sit awhile on the grass

the well of tears  at last

comes unabated, unashamed as,

desolate, I speak to the other half of me,

retrieving images of the past,

the highs and lows of our together life:

the poetry we fed on that filled the soul

as our empty pouches laid concealed in the

richness of our dreams; the hurts we

unknowingly meted out to each other. What are

aches and pains for--that gnaw at layers and layers

of grit--if they cannot unearth the Phoenix in us?

Shared rage against inequity, shared agony

over the cauldrons of war, shared anguish

over injustice, shared dreams and hopes for peace.

Such passion and ecstasy, anger and humor--

all inextricably bound in the mingling

of life’s laughter and tears.

This self must go on through the motions of life

though not quite whole, not quite hale,

for the other half of me is gone.

(How strong she is, people say; if only they knew…)

Tasks must be finished, whatever the heavens drop;

but there is an end to every journey, I, too well, know.

Little drops of rain moisten the soil on my other half;

the cold tomb looks up at the endless blue above,

and the earth sucks the tears of the vaulted sky.

I beg the other half of me, be patient, wait for the

Dispenser of Life to fill the tomb’s empty space by your side

and make the we of us complete again. #

Death in the Winehouse

Amy Winehouse: another victim of drug addiction, so it was reported. A young, so young a singer. Beautiful from what I have seen of her in pictures. Acclaimed artist, talented, so much future in the field of her art that is music. Found dead on July 23, 2011 at her home in north London. She is said to have joined the "27 Club," a list of music legends who have died at this young age after periods of battles with either drugs or alcoholism  resulting in overdose of such or as a result of a fatal mix or a combination of different kinds of drugs:  Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones,  all dying at the age of 27. But why 27? A conspiracy of the times? One can never explain.

I never knew Amy until now; never heard her singing; never knew how tragic was her personal life just as I never knew the lives of those other 27-year-olds till now. Except for Kurt Cobain whose name was turned into a verb by a columnist when this columnist had ended her eulogy with the caution, "Please, do not Cobain." I never knew them personally nor even knew their existence until tragedy ended their lives, but their deaths haunt me and I weep for them. These are not only the children of their parents: they are our children. Would that somebody had reached out to them, prayed for them, cared for them. Would it have made a difference? Could it? -Blanca Datuin

Washington, D.C, Revisited

Flying is not exactly my favorite mode of reaching my destination. Is it acrophobia? No, I'm not having any panic attack. Nor spinning sensation. Rather, the psychogenic arises from mental images of the 9/11 events,air collisions, crashing in midair or into the ocean , plane bursting into flame. Not exactly my desired manner of exiting the world. Frankly, if God would allow it, when my mission in life is all done, I hope to breathe my last in a more unexcited manner, with the cool quiescence of going gently into that good night. Such morbid thoughts, you would say. Would I one day perhaps qualify to be in the company of the elite pilots of AAA (Altitude Avoidance Anonymous)?  Ah, fear of flying (not to be mistaken for the kind of Erica Jong's Fear of  Flying)--why is it fraught with tintinnabulation not so pleasant to hear?

And so, just to play it safe, prior to this flight, I reviewed my will (though there's really not much to will except some relics of my heritage and  a few fruits of my and my husband's toil and sweat). I handed over to my children my living trust and my irrevocable wishes that I hope will find fruition upon my departure from this world, if not while I'm around to see them happen. Such business as putting one's house in order seems, however, to be always doomed to be left unfinished and I have to throw up my hands in complete abandon.

Strange, though, that once I was 35,000 feet above on that beautiful Wednesday morning in July, with the Psalm of David on my lips and my omnipresent rosary prayed, peace reigned, as it always does when I'm up there; the heart sensed a calm and stillness not felt when one is down to the earth of endless commotion and agitation. I was in the palm of His hand, floating up in the air where He was the captain of my soul (as He always is) and that of my co-passengers.

An elderly man seated beside me asked, "Where are you bound?" I furrowed my eyebrows; I didn't want my peace disturbed. "Huh?" and the man said, "Oh, you don't understand English? I see." I almost burst into laughter. Me, an English teacher, and I don't understand English. I shook my head and said, "No hablo Ingles." Good thing he didn't speak Spanish  or he would have discovered the deception.   Poor man, I thought, he's just being friendly and wanted to while away the hours of a long  flight. It was his misfortune to be seated next to one basking in solitude. Back to my window side and back to my breathtaking view of clouds, white as snow, looking magnificently like cotton candy moving ever so gracefully as our plane sped away . I sat back and closed my eyes; the peace was heavenly.

Upon landing at the Reagan International, it was dear old friend, Dave Valderrama, I saw waiting for me. Dave and his wife Nelia I had not seen for 39 years since my late husband and my children left Washington, D.C. in 1972 after a brief stay in Virginia where we had waited for my husband to finish his summer teaching stint at the University of New York in Buffalo.  I was not sure I would recognize Dave, but he easily spotted me, thank God. Seeing him now with a cane, so different from the sprightly Atty.David Valderrama we had known decades ago,  I murmured vaguely after the preliminary greetings and hugs, "You didn't have to come. You could have just sent your driver." But he countered, "No, I wanted to be the one to welcome an old friend back to Washington." That was so like him--the brilliant, gracious, gallant politician that won the hearts of Maryland to become the first Filipino-American to be elected state assemblyman (delegate to the State of Maryland) in the whole United States. That was in the 1980's when a lot of racism still brewed, the times rife with division among the Whites, the Blacks and the Asians.

From the airport, Dave took me straight to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland: He quipped "we have a reception for you." To which I uttered, "You're kidding."  "No, I'm not, there's our welcome committee" he answered.  Sure enough, there was Imelda Abella, multicultural affairs liaison officer, standing right. by the door as we went up the ramp to the entrance of that grand building. I found it rather amazing how he could make one feel welcomed, although  I suspected that was the regular get-together day of Dave's gang of friends from the Philippine Embassy and it just happened to be my arrival time. After a hearty dinner, almost all took turns on the mike to belt out a few Sinatra songs and some native songs for entertainment.

The multicultural Center sits on a sprawling area at 7800 Livingston Road in Oxon Hill, Maryland. It's actually  a dream fulfillment of Dave's as carried out by his daughter, Kris Valderrama,  who has followed her father's footsteps in politics.(She  is now the current Delegate of Prince George's County to the state of Maryland.) A tour of the Center showed an ambitious multicultural project in progress, the first phase having been inaugurated two years ago, the second and third phases still waiting to materialize as much-needed funds are yet to come. The objective? To develop a gathering place where people of different ethnicity can meet,  exchange cultural talents in the arts and literature. have lively discussions of current issues affecting them, resolve any existing problems and enrich relationships. Dave remembered the times when racial discord was so rampant in the area he wouldn't even be allowed to enter his room to sit in his chair as the first probate judge of Filipino ancestry.

Thursday was spent visiting Dave's wife, Nelly, who has been ailing and wheelchair-bound, no longer her old vibrant self but still with traces of her old beauty. There in a high-rise condo overlooking the beautiful Potomac River, Dave has been spending a semi-retired life, if you can call it that--the kind of life that is  still stubbornly committed to service as the honorary chair of the Fil-American National Foundation, Inc. that push the reality of the Multicultural Center. Seeing him run the Center, you wouldn't believe what he's going through, looking after his wife (whom he has provided with two caregivers for a 24-hour watch) even as he battles his own heart ailment and high blood pressure. Amazing how he has kept his laconic sense of humor through all his trials.
(
Dave took me back to their old house where the packages we had left them decades ago for safekeeping were supposed to be lodged in the old garage. This was actually my mission in going to D.C.--to retrieve, more specifically, the galley proofs of my husband's novel, But for the Lovers, with the notations of Hal Scharlatt, Wilfrido's editor at E.P. Dutton Publishing in New York. It's an important piece of my husband's memorabilia. To me, it was worth coming to D.C. for. If only I would recover them... Unfortunately, the garage was a labyrinth, as Dave had warned me earlier, and even with the help of the house' caretakers, I had to give up in the humid air. Empty-handed, I was none too happy, and had to content myself with leaving instructions/request to  Manny and wife to please, please try to find the boxes marked "Nolledo" when the time comes that some daughter of Dave's will decide to clear the garage.

The galley proofs of But for the Lovers that I was after bore the marginal notes of the well-known New York literary editor Scharlatt, considered a genius in his field. They would make an interesting study by literary readers or researchers. Which paragraph(s) did he delete, which paragraph(s) did he retain after Wilfrido fought for such retention. I remember him arguing with HAl, "Four hundred years my country suffered under the Spaniards and I'm asking only that this chapter not be touched!"  Wilfrido won. But alas, this piece of document, however, may just have been lost in oblivion.

Back to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, I found a crowd of Filipino teachers of Prince George's County, Maryland, in a powwow on how to battle the war being waged against them by the US Immigration Bureau. Leave voluntarily or be deported--that was the message they got from the Immigration that early July, 2011 because their working visas would no longer be renewed. And on that account they could not be employed or re-hired. When in the past so many years, some reportedly 1044 educators from the Philippines were recruited by the Prince George's County Public School, they were deducted H1-B from their teacher's salaries. This was discovered by the Department of Labor that declared such fees should have been paid by the employers of the teachers. Thus the teachers were owed some $4,000 each in back pay. While teachers at first hailed this as just retribution for the unjust collection of fees from them, they soon discovered the implication of the County's being barred from participating in the H1-B program--those whose visas were about to expire cannot now be re-hired. The big question the teachers wanted answered was why they were the ones being punished by being deprived now of their right to continue working. The answer of course is that if the County was being barred from participating for two years in the HI-B program, how can it now re-hire or sponsor any of these teachers? With their visas expiring in just a few days, how can they just suddenly pack up and go?

I found one of them in a corner of the Center's kitchen area, weeping silently. I approached to comfort her. "How can I leave just like that?" She said.  "I have loans,  mortgage I need to pay or I'll lose all that I have invested."  Another said, "I have been here  for eight years, have paid  taxes, contributed to the improvement of the economy and  the quality of education   Don't the Labor people have hearts? I have built my life here!" Panic and anger, but mostly anger. Afterall, no one would like to go on staying here and be hounded as undocumented residents. They were plucked out of their residences in the Philippines and they thought the greener pasture they were promised would never turn bleak. I  wasn't able to follow up what happened after I had left D.C. But I heard they had taken their protest up the steps of the White House where all the Fil-Am teachers joined them in solidarity even though they were not affected.

Eve of my departure, a visit to the Library of Congress could not be missed. Again, Dave generously lent me his car for use the whole day as he was going to New York to deliver a speech as guest speaker at a Fil-American group there. I was able to see Reme Grefalda, indefatigable publisher of the online Our ereOwn Voice, who is now with the Asian Cultural Department of the Library. If you want to browse over some ancient Asian writings or doing research on such topics, that is the place to go to. Hundreds of tourists milled all over, taking photos here and there. It's impossible to visit all the nooks and cranny, and I had to confine myself to just a few exhibits, the famous Gutenberg Bible among them.

It would have been wonderful to have revisited our old Virginia residence where my family had spent a short but memorable experience with the children happily prancing in the open back patio and sometimes  swimming in the pool with family friend Andy Afable (poet from the University of the Philippines) teaching them how to swim. and me being just a full-time mother as my husband taught Creative Writing at the University of New York.  Not much, however, could be packed in a three-day visit. Time to say goodbye to all the gracious staff of Dave - Cora, Nanding, Imelda and all. There were interesting stories I gathered along the way on the lives of these lovely people. But that will be for another time, another piece to be woven together. -Blanca Datuin

Haiku and Other Arcane Pieces

 Haiku
by blanca datuin

Easter
Spring sprang here
like the leap of a bunny
whiting life beginnings.

Vesper


Do you hear silence?
S-h-h-h,The lizards are praying
unmoved by the blare.

Death of three Filipinos in China

Philip See ‎@Blanca may i suggest you review the facts, these are not firs timers. and besides how can they be victim when they took the trip to China not as OFW but as courier? enlighten us then if my facts are wrong (based on their travel documents, not the first timedid they travel to china on a no contract with any company or employer, source withheld) Hindi ba katakataka wala silang trabaho or contrata at pupunta sila sa China?"
9 hours ago ·

The above is a reaction to my comment on the three convicted Filipino drug dealers' execution today in China. This event has generated countless reactions, and on Facebook Solita Monsod, columnist and former NEDA Director, started it with her comment "I was deeply saddened by the news about the execution of 3 OFWs in China today. Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort their family tomorrow." My own comment that was reacted upon by Philip is below:

• Blanca Datuin Too sad indeed, and not one in the Philippines can help. I grieve with the families."
  Is  Philip suggesting I should deny myself sadness? Whether the convicted drug dealers are guilty or not is not the point of contention in my comment, myself, admittedly, not privy to all the facts. It's the sadness over their death and the country's helplessness to have the death sentence commuted to at least life sentence, the Philippines, from where they come, being a country that no longer practices capital punishment. I feel sad, yes. To paraphrase John Donne, each man's death diminishes us who are part of mankind. To die without being given a chance at conversion is merciless and those  who condemn and give up on alleged "sinners" may cast stones if they can say without batting an eye that they are perfect. As the poet expresses, "Do not  ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." 
  The good news is that, as gleaned from the countless comments on this thread, the Filipinos care---about the concomitant issues of death sentence, drug trafficking, poverty, indifference of the rich and powerful, corruption of some authorities that could have prevented drug trafficking. The comments may clash in opinions, some posts may express anger and some may be funny, but people 
  have taken time to express. Though one wonders, how will all that help the poor and those going down the pit of crime? 

Forwarded by a friend

Sharing a good laugh. ---

Price of gas in France

A thief in  Paris  planned to steal some Paintings from the Louvre.

After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van.

However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, 'Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings.'

'I had no Monet

To buy Degas

To make the Van Gogh.'

See if you have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else.

I sent it to you because I figured I had nothing  Toulouse …

An Excerpt from "The Nature of Man," by Blanca Datuin

---

More than two decades ago, I wrote a 30-page class paper on "The Nature of Man" for my psychology class in a college in Los Angeles. My instructor was one who sounded like either agnostic or atheist, judging from the opinions he dished out from time to time. Since he graded my paper  "A," he must have understood well the logic of the analysis I presented and hopefully, accepted the conclusions. I would have wanted to disseminate my analysis as part of a book collection of essays, but time seems to be running out. So, let me just do the next best thing and share with you some excerpts from the last chapter of my paper since pertinent to a discussion we, in an egroup on cyberspace,  had on the nature of man. So much has been written about this topic from time immemorial, but to my knowledge, the Creation has never been explained the way it has been analyzed in this paper. 

Interpretation of the Biblical Narration

an excerpt from “The Nature of Man” by

Blanca Datuin, (c) 1990

The story of creation in the Bible tells of God saying, after creating the earth and the firmament and kinds of living things, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground."  In the second story of the creation, again, man's beginning is told but it focuses on another aspect of his being: "...the Lord formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being."  .........

There are two things in the biblical narration that this researcher observes to be very significant in explaining human nature. First is the medium out of which God made man. The second is God's breathing into his nostrils to give him life and thus, making man "in our image."  "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (Genesis, 2, 7)

Slime or clay is that fine-grained earth that, mixed with the right amount of water, can be formed into any shape the sculptor or potter wishes. It is dull, without luster, until polished to a gloss. It is soft enough for shaping purposes but hard as a rock once it is kilned to a degree. Unlike rock, however, the finished product, because made of clay, remains fragile. It can break into pieces if not handled properly. The same qualities are manifested in a human being: from being newly-born up to a certain young age, he is pliant and can be shaped into the desired form, before he gets hardened in the furnace of life   He is earthy and corruptible in his basic instincts; dull of mind until honed to perfection in a process of education and re-education and as an ever-evolving person. He is also fragile and vulnerable until his coping mechanism is strengthened in a nurturing environment.

Whether taken literally or figuratively, man's body having been formed out of clay, will always infer the above-mentioned qualities of human nature.  Clay is the perfect medium for an artist to whom God, in His act of creation, is likened. Clay is also that solid matter that explains the materiality of the human body. In the Christian way of thinking, however, the body is like a temple of God as it is where the soul resides. It should thus be treated with respect: it should not be abused, defiled or tainted the way a drug-dependent, for instance, or a sex maniac abuses his own as well as those of others.

The second significant point in the biblical narration is the statement about God's having blown into man's nostrils the breath of life. This is the infusion of a part of God's perfection, a part of His own nature as a spiritual being: the breath of life that animates. This is the principle of life--the soul that is capable of rising to heights of splendor an All-Good God is said to have wanted man to rise to . His potentialities abound beyond imagination even as his efforts to sift the good from the bad is fraught with much faltering, trepidation and pain.

God's breath is the external force, the efficient cause described by St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica discussed earlier in this paper. Even if taken merely as a metaphor, the act would still symbolize the privileged position of man among all His other creations. For man alone is the one breathed into by God; thus, he alone has had that kind of personal contact with God, which explains what most theologians describe as an intimate relationship between God and man.  It is an act of perfect love from God that no rational person can deny. For how can one's giving of himself to another be anything else? In infusing man a part of His own perfection, God made him in His own likeness: endowed with spirit like Himself and a creator himself in many ways: a giver of life in the regenerative process of life, a poet, an artist, a lover, an engineer, an author, and in various other ways.

As can be deduced from the Story of Creation alone, man is of dual nature. Whether to be taken literally or metaphorically (as has been debated constantly between believers and non-believers), the implication remains the same, that man is made of matter and form—matter, which the body is made of, and form--the soul, which, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, has for its end the natural longing to be united back to its Creator.  Thus, man has the bodily nature whose laws and needs must be obeyed if the body is to be healthy and not deteriorate to the utter failure of its vital functions: it must be fed, it must be nourished properly, cared for and not abused, etc. Then there is the spiritual nature whose laws must also be obeyed if the soul will fulfill its function of directing its will to its proper end of being united to its Creator: nourish it with all the possible ways at man’s disposal; let it grow to the height it is meant for by its Creator. The union of body and soul implies their interacting together in a symbiotic way.

It is not within the realm of this paper to elaborate on those possible ways the Creator gave for man to use, but suffice it to say that He gave man a very potent tool he can use in directing his way to the right route towards his end. That tool is free will, the power to choose whether to harness or squander all the Creator’s  gifts to mankind. Man has the power to choose whether to rise to the sublime and above the level of the brute, above the appetitive and sentient level of life or to go down and crawl like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

The power to reason, a principle of activity basic to man’s nature, is a dynamic term connoting certain laws of nature which are within his reasonable intellect to observe, apprehend, analyze and act upon accordingly. Fully developed, this power urges him to seek truth and justice and pushes him to realms of grandeur and beauty. An impairment of this rationality, of course, or a refusal to exercise it in the accomplishment of a life harmonious to both his bodily and spiritual nature is an imperfection that may be traced to some physical defects (brain damage, for instance), cognitive flaws or societal ills,  topics  not within the realm of this discussion. Rationality, in the final analysis, is man’s greatest asset, his redeeming instrument  in what is, more often than not, a tumultuous life journey.

- alma viajero