SABBATICAL NOTES. 6 MAR 2014. N2. Memoria, Memoria. I PROMISED MYSELF TO GO BACK TO MY FAITH without the accidents, the faith with substance. I have reached a point where I could say, Faith indeed moves mountains, all mountains, according to mystics in their most illumined way of expressing things, with some hyperbole, with some tropes thrown in, but with some grain of truth. At three in the morning in these parts, thousands of kilometers away from my first homeland, and thousands more away from my second and adoptive home, I try to think through, to schedule my day, to keep believing that I can write, that I should write, that I came here to write and that I must fulfill that promise to myself. At three in the morning when everyone is asleep, you remember these things. At three in the morning when the city is dreaming of its own truths, you have the chance to get into your own confessional box and work things out with yourself. At three in the morning when no soul in this city that has come about even before the birth of The Christ, and thus a city of many spirits and it is eerily quiet, you can only think of what to write. I look out my window with its double shutters--the second shutter I always leave it open for easy access to a view I paid for--and I see the Plaza de Ayuntamiento that has seen all the protests and the victorious shouts of people through the ages. From the first Iberian settlers some 5,000-6,000 years ago, Iberian settlers who called themselves another name for their tribe, to the Visigoths later, and then the Arabs, and then the Jews, and then the Romans coming to conquer, and then other people too, this city must be so burdened by its history, and yet must have been freed by it as well. This, I think, is what we sorely lack in the Philippines: the ability to carry the burden of history, the real one, and then to move that history forward. VALENCIA/ 6 Mar 2014/0400 AM
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 04:23:51 +0000
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