An Adieu to 2005

As we barge into the year 2006 (I wonder if barge is the appropriate word but sneak in appears too timid) we are torn between hope and fear. Most have formally bidded the year 05 goodbye and if a generalization were to be made, the year 2005 was a mediocre period although in the field of politics, or government, there was a tsunami of sorts which however failed to sweep away Ate Glue. (She's not called Ate Glue for nothing.)

Anyway, I've said my own good-byes to years I don't care to count, goodbyes in the throes of alcoholic stupor, or else the ear-splitting noises of an expiring year --- and hey, how about those New Years with gals whose names I can not now retrieve, the skies alive with explosive color and all that.

And so goodbye 2005. Welcome 2006, which some Chinese-oriented friends, call the year of the Fierce Dog. No ordinary dog will do. A fierce, snarling canine would be appropriate.

So as I sit and write and try to lift the veil that hides the days of the new year, I feel a cold wind blowing. Will we, as a people, have more of the same? Are we still game for the hanky-panky being played by many rogues in the government?

As I was taking my breakfast, a radio commentator was excoriating the fate of that Air-Force colonel who denounced the abuses of the generals stealing from the fund of the Air-Force. Instead of being hailed as a hero, as somebody trying to reform a rotting system this finger-pointer was being hounded by this administration. What is this, the commentator asks. Is this a defeat by those who have horns over those who have wings?

Last week, December 30, was the anniversary of the execution of our hero Jose Rizal. I didn't write my column to include some thoughts on the martyr. It may be that we do not remember, as much as we should, our hero. Maybe human memory is frail and we, who are embroiled in the task of living in the present, do not remember the ghost of the past.

So I evoke the last dawn of our hero. He is in his cell before being led out to be shot:

"This cell reminds me of a tomb. And the smell. If fear, pain and panic had smells, this would be a compound. Or do prison stones, like the human skin, have pores, sweating in this fetid darkness? It is also the smell of the dead. The previous occupants of this cell must hve left the only legacy of their smells. Is that all that they have left behind? Yet, I detect, at the

corner of this room, almost invisible, somebody has scratched the words: "Viva Libertad, Viva Filipinas". What did the poor wretch use in scratching out legend - his ring? His bare nails? He is as much of an author as I am though I have spelled out his message in two lengthy books. Was it the garrote that squeezed out his life? A hall of bullets that splattered out his brains?

* * *

Yesterday, I had a stream of visitors, mostly Jesuits. They had come to save my soul. Some of them are my dear friends. They argued that I ought to go back to the fold. They pointed out that I was suffering from the sin of pride. All the whole thing appeared trivial to me. Go back to the fold when I have never strayed in the larger sense? My belief in God remains unshaken inspite of whispers that I had become an agnostic, if not an atheist. I die a Christian, remembering that even a thief, an outcast, managed to get the blessing of Christ as he hang on the cross. What was my sin? Where had I done wrong that my soul has to be in jeopardy. Was it in fighting for my principles or in sacrificing for my country? God knows how I long, like the others, for the comforts of a home the haven of domesticity, the caresses of chortling children. Yet I had abjured all that for the bitter fight so that the Filipino may have a measure of self-respect. I have spilled my guts writing my novels, amidst the derision of some Filipinos. Useless visionary, the described me. I nearly starved in Ghent finishing the Fili. Ghent ws beautiful, though. Hearing the chirp of the birds on an empty stomach is an experience…. Well, if all these spell my soul's perdition… let it be, though I know that He who has invested man with reason can not pervert the principle of reason when He judges."

* * *

I hope that I have given the reader a view as to what happened inside the brain of our hero. As we all know, when Josephine Bracken visited him for the last time he gave her the manuscript of the "Ultimo Adios" one of the most beautiful valedictories in any language.*

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