THE FAR OFF TRAVELLER 

by Nicolas Montemar Jr. We traveled to Manila for arrangements with the recruitment office. And we found out the agency demanded a requirement that was never specified beforehand by a distant relative who persuaded us to go. We were surprised and dismayed when being much already away upon realizing that the barrio folk’s fussiness about exciting endeavors has just come into a dubious situation, after being won to agree on a journey for a job abroad. Although I had a reliable job before, I was only making a start as a youth forced to work back home on a minimum wage that, as a result, was too inadequate to be depended upon for the expenses of the venture that have arisen. My mother was too indigent and poor enough and my uncle was just as irrelevant to remote issues and adamant about even just paying notice on this creepy hoax. In our blood relatives no one had ever shown generosity that uplifted my own well-being except aunt Trining who already died. When it was generally considered the undertaking was just a family affair, with all the shortcomings to eventually crop up, it became a preoccupation for all the people who were swayed to the venture, when it turned out the situation to be ludicrous and unnerving. Those culprits became all evasive and demanding. Juaning Tan, the father of the recruiter who summoned the poor folks of our Barrio, impressed upon us all a better life but sooner it rendered me wanting and found myself at a loss what to do. And furthermore, it sank me into a hapless, penniless traveler who fell into the hands of various people that altogether has nothing to do and is oblivious about the consequent want that called for an immediate remedy whatsoever.

What befell me was having landed to various places and persons on loose terms for a means of living, a degenerative far cry from my former status of previous work arrangements. The people involved in this digressive act was purposely unmindful of the intentional omission and mess they caused as the succeeding events descended toward a complex situation for myself which I solitarily faced in very intrusive circumstances. Life went on differently ushering me away from my chosen calling until such time I was being pushed to the grounds of insolubility. To have attended only brief time in college and even if I had already acquired the appropriate skills to boot, to reinstate the culture and mutual coordination that developed between us and the personnel of

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the Tacloban Coca Cola Plant, which I sacrificed to leave them to acquiesce to the venture, has become altogether dim. I mainly quit school at the thought of furthering my career on the alternative way workable within the given setting in the central Visayas region. But a return to Coke and to the province to resurrect a former situation favorable to my purposes is already out of the question. Injury had already been set that created a condition to dwell and be beholden to it. What would the Coca-Cola people say if I returned empty handed when I persisted on leaving them which was also a great opportunity? I explained my case in earnest before I embarked for Manila and reassured them I would be alright, but as things turned out differently later however, it would only come out stupid for me to lose their trust if I return a failure. It only deemed proper to go on and try my best wherever it takes, that might overshadow the mess I underwent, and in so doing, keep my promise, hopefully.They might have to think as well I only encountered many hurdles that came my way, as when I could not have made it right on purpose, it would be equally of no basis for me turning back as an adventurous individual that it only deemed proper for me to wrestle it all out. To return a total failure indeed creates a profile of indecisiveness and thus, to lose their confidence in me, it only justly calls for a necessity to rise from the setback and come up with a development that might make them equally see me as I should. Anyways, there had not been indications so far that the dismal path I was treading showed signs of more reassurances. Of late, intense dilemma ensued: to go back limping deluded with ungiving eyes of my summoners and suffer the consequences, or persevere with the only perceptible opportunities at hand, in a bid to seek my fortune wherever it may take.

While I was still in Balud embarking for departure, mother referred me to Jesse Madriaga who bragged his clout of being a well-placed Manila-oriented resident in case I needed their help. He was a brother of a barrio captain back home, who has a commercial-artist son in Manila named Mike and who reassured of their standing as a person to lean on, and thus mother exchanged pleasantries and raised future recommendations from them. And the Barrio Captain himself was an habitual Manila itinerant who is flashy about their families’ conspicuousness in any blood-relatives gathering event – they were also our distant relatives - but just as nonchalant of what to care about as to be showy as they are. Juaning Tan, who is a cousin of the Madriagas would clumsily talk about the nature of my skills just to grandstand in his initiatives to enhance his recruitments but just as despicable to

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unnerve me of its unseemliness. Then the true reality began to show in Manila, - it was during our temporary stay at the recruiter’s apartment, a new house under construction and to where we were called upon to help build while we awaited development about the work abroad that a blatant instance of exploitation came to be apparent. Because of the clear tendency about this uncalled-for turn, mother came from the Visayas to try to sort it out, lamely, and so to no consequence. At one point we boarded together in the recruiter’s car and they flaunted a lavish lifestyle - for just an improper manifestation of a situation in our company who does not altogether register a due reaction to it. The situation placed us, applicants in a position to be forced to help build their unfinished house to no expense. Days went on till we grew tired, impatient, beset by hunger, running out of money and placed us under the spell of their whim. And we were admonished from time to time for the lack of papers and money that we got and for unworkableness to let it proceed. At one point, it was told, one applicant had succeeded, out of more than 20 persons in us, though they became fond of raising my vocation as a laughingstock when matters became more tedious and ridiculous for the rest. The house finally completed, but to no positive results to our plight, only annoying insinuations about grandstanding, in their perverted display of inanity that mocked us in the face. Mike Madriaga turned out also to be elusive and disapproving in many alibis, a complete turn around of what his father assured us of him. And in a seemingly deceptive guise of spontaneity of a transition in our plight gone awry, we were made to work for another relative’s business establishment soon to be opened who also seized the same opportunity to further the anomaly. The gradual pace toward greater difficulty took its toll and to much more poignant episodes. Later on I moved with my mother in a house of her friend, her provincemate, but hounded by futility and insolvency as we had been, we only began to quarrel later, and finally came to a bitter parting of our ways unceremoniously. I never wanted my mother to follow me in Manila anyway in such an already frail condition, when it could not have actually addressed the problem and had only been driven by erratic impulses. And when she was at last gone, I vowed to face all troubles, alone, if necessary, without the burden of delusions and empty promises, when indeed nobody seemed to understand the acceleration for the worst I was headed to.To cap it all, I could even do without a relative, and swore to shun them altogether - a non relative could be much more palatable to swallow. I resolved to live up to my fate for every possible means of my resources and energy.

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When the duration of earlier embarrassment elapsed to allow me to look back much more objectively, I perceived myself of having to face a new stage of burden to carry, yet still, came onto my own again as I did in such a mess that obviously was not worth any person’s notice. Who cares anyway, if I was only an impoverished nonentity. When it was not yet a ripe option to totally abandon our group altogether, I resolved to try to find employment in every possible, fastest way at best. And I vowed never to return to the province without arriving at a condition that enables me to sort it out on the recruiter. By twist of fate, it happened for me to find recommendations for employment from an uncle of the recruiter, a much more influential, richer Manila resident and a seemingly kinder benefactor, though the development ushered me into a more complex situation regarding my own psychological stability to tackle. He used to play as a kind godfather to our province-mates, and even lent a helping hand to non-relatives who seek their betterment in life. And yet I can only keep myself mum about his being a sibling of my tormentor. It may not be enough to put up as a basis though, as a parameter of weighing considerations to a person's nature in relation to the other whatsoever if such another perceivable one stands for itself. He, being a lawyer and holding a higher post in a sensitive government position, I thought it was a considerable remedy of being accorded favors in which every other matter on the sidelines could only be treated with objectivity, in spite of a kinship that entails a certain degree of dilemma. Nevertheless, semblance of welfare determines and offers a basis of assessment for worthiness. He was a 74 year-old director of the Legislative Service of the Department of Budget and Management, who incidentally went on vacation to Matutinao long ago and innocently noticed paintings in my aunt Trining’s house. He learned it later from me as my own work, being inquisitive to ask me about it in our later encounter while making speculations about my origins and inclinations. I saw them – their family early in youth as a lavish and flamboyant vacationer on the sleepy rustic coastal barrio of my growth when I was a reticent and curious boy. The realization made my presence a little bit weighed, as I might have only to be taken in vain, lest it would stir for something to say irrelevant about the omission involving his brother while I happen to stumble upon their lot and muddle our concurrence, though he himself had nothing to do with it all along. One day, we rode in his car early on in our company, and we happened to pass by a cylindrical, concrete, huge water tank in Murphy, Q.C. district while being painted,

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and I said, “There, that was once like my work at Coca- Cola, I was a contractor then.” He replied, “Really? Alright, you indeed are, but it’s better for you to have found a more decent and safer job right now. That is dangerous, your life would be just literally at stake.” In comparison though, to weigh the essence of my situation in the previous work to what replaces now purportedly for betterment and relief, as it was to be clearer later, is of the former a small, “isolated prick” of the senses, while the latter, for the whole consequence, shudders the whole nervous system leaving a lasting effect. On that occasion, I was already newly employed on a contractual basis at DBM where we used to regularly pass by that tower in going to the office. And occasionally seeing that tower being worked upon, it called to mind at once the visions of my old job at the Coke. Any apparitions reminiscent of my work at the company always promptly enkindle the memories of my short but such a stimulating past. I never felt giddiness with the similar height of that tower of 20 stories, in spite of the fact that I don’t wear safety belts, but I was just as innocently charged with drive to work, work and solely work alone. The tower at Murphy was being decorated with a less popular design. But for my part, I set myself on a scaffold in a design already familiar to the people, that of the Coke’s, this, seemingly being already part of mundane popular spectacle. So that my every efforts simply entailed a familiarity in design from every observer that I just repeated over and over again, while only it becomes solely a means to discharge convictions, devoid of doubt and faltering, that what mattered most was only being consumed in concentrations and backbreaking toil, self confidence and sense of peace. The Murphy tower indeed reminded me of a short but colorful episode of the past that now has charged me with equal brevity and courage for all the odds and futility ahead of me. I was already temporarily staying at the house of this DBM director Salvador F. Tan in those times when “Chong Baduy,” as he was fondly called in Balud, Capoocan Leyte, the Barrio of our origin and the place we were all recruited from, recommended and helped expedite the processing of my employment at DBM in Malacañang. It was while I stayed at his house that marked the introductory stage of my life in government. They treated me as a new member of their family and became a conspicuous personal company of Chong Baduy anywhere he goes, either in official on or off duties. To their relief and gratitude too, was when it was discovered my drawing skills to be too good for his offspring’s college projects, that at times I would be swamped with orders to render their homeworks. I also painted in oil for the family portrait of the married members, discovering too, the art

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materials I possessed could be expedient to the best services I could make, in return for their generosity. And it surprised them upon seeing such unusual manifestations of an artistically inclined. The entire family, educated as they were, too, for each of their own kind of profession, and despite of my being only a second year in college -they seemed to assume, my stride could not be as much alienable to them, as for the more grateful they are for the rarity of my vocation. The director had, in time, learned to treat things with me through referring to matters that haphazardly touches on issues concerning fine arts. Anyway, I was U.P. student myself, of a school that excels in every field of learning but the training of artists. Yet, notwithstanding the brief formal education, I was already a self -taught painter early on. It was only a given chance that I happened to know these people if ever it made an imprint in my life, past or present. I should have rubbed shoulders with artists in Cebu otherwise, but fate decreed I had to be landed into these places, putting me into a necessity to seek for the continuance in the development of my career, whatever a way. Even if I had stopped schooling, my success as an artist in the Visayas could have been already secured, but now that I have trodden away, I have yet to see what consequences it may bring when I would be mingling with non- artists as I formally assume to lead a life in government. Various ways had to be tried anyway, as what innovative artists would do to make a chance upon unique results. I had also conjectured that to trod upon a common and beaten ground does not make a departure far enough to enable to chart and discover new things, and so to go altogether differently wherever - it was my initial postulate - it might also be a right way if it could also usher toward an artistic revolution. The early periods of my employment at DBM with the mere realities that goes with it,however, filled me with an air of a seemingly complex, tenebrous, unfamiliar and unsettling kind of struggle. It never took much positive weight and relevance to have come into such a work setting though, only temporary relief from some inexpediency lately met, and although it has gotten to a certain degree of opportunity to work upon, it was just arduous and conflicting for a pertinent goal that I still lack the ability to turn away from. In an atmosphere, situated in a refined, intelligent class of people, I would be navigating in a lonely sea of strange, at times unfriendly and uncooperative individuals, whereas, conversely it was just pure pleasure working totally as an artist. The work situation here does not directly apply to the nature of my vocation, but I had to find a way to pave my way through,

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whatever the means. Most people were accountants, economists and lawyers, that differed in nature and personal background and to normally assimilate with them with a different skill and corresponding nature it entails, would require uncommon ways to get along with them. But then, on particular instances, such a path might just also be favorable to artists’ development academically, being mainly accessible to books though an artistically inclined mind would always practically seek a way out in spending the mundane existence in such adverse circumstances. There was still attention he imparted at work and considerations were being accorded by S.F. TAN himself on me in reference to and on the awareness of my career every time matters are raised at the office that touches on art. Although S.F. TAN is a lawyer, he evinced a considerable regard to the degree of my ability, even if it is only scarcely applicable to the mundane Legal office’s functions. Such a compliment was just essential in day-to-day progress even as simple art for office work makes little significance if only to strengthen connections. Where standard activity is run much in the employ of the intellect and where it also grows and nurtures their kind of field, it also offers to burgeon from values derivable from it for another field that I had yet to carve for my own. The intellectual stimulation in the air, partly contributes a kind of education expedient for any diverse end, as I was still in the formative stage while broadening a pertinent knowledge. I took my sense of value to linger on account of having to move in the interaction of people that entails some advantages for relevant growth. And S.F. Tan displayed such a copious generosity to help me uplifted, even just for an ordinary office employee as a start in a government agency directly under the President within Malacañang grounds. This job, even if somewhat technically divergent from my previous experience, with the guidance and consideration of S.F. Tan regarding the stamp in the corresponding activity, my existence was borne with some significance by initiating my introduction to people with the background and skill I possess. He made me a Sr. Utility man directly under him officially, but this only posed as a formality arrangement in the actual reciprocity that we embraced, and I knew very well that if it would not have been possible, the prospect of leaving the whole place at once was my only choice. Meanwhile, the twist of fate for me to have stumbled upon S.F. Tan’s lot was a defining moment of my life: not only that my success was already secured had I

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been in the visayas, the extent of inexplicable suffering and terrible consumption in government could have made my energy and soul spent for other Manila capers produced some palpable and materially rewarding results. As time went on and the progress seemingly going on smoothly, I took the opportunity to start randomly initiating on an artist’s miscellaneous jobs, officially and unofficially. And then, there came the necessity to prove and bolster my trustworthiness and confidence in the DBM when the Administrative office sought for my school certificate of good moral character, of which my school acceded to send upon my request, even with compliments so far as wishing me good luck. My personal manifestations, with S.F. Tan’s guidance made an imprint on DBM according to the worth and value he acknowledged. Then the progress in the development shall find its proper place later, in the orderly and harmonious step of possessing the prerogative to stamp the assumed ground, which just made me more involved, entwined and endeared within the organization. As S.F. Tan saw my conspicuous work in Matutinao as I already mentioned, that caught his fancy in light of my origin and the now evident personal calling, with regard to the fact the culture of blood relationship between us relatives raised it to his notice, it added the spur in him to extend enough attentions for my guidance in the DBM. His offsprings, surprised to know I briefly studied at U.P. when they themselves attended a much lesser known school, somewhat became an eye-opener for us now that we have met again, while having only eventually seen me long ago as a country boy. The Tan family mostly grew in Tacloban and Manila, and it was only my first encounter with them in Matutinao, when they were already an affluent family long before the advent of my early youth. To have come up with the present consciousness about us in relation to distant past, seems to have only been a dream when we now stand together, reckoning of how I managed to come into the way, yet speculating what future and kind of development it may bring in working with an agency dealing with budgetary matters. Or can this be a dream at all if not a trance, as conditions hang in the balance of whether what way it will take, being thrusted into a situation with heavier complexities to confront. The matter with S.F. Tan was only a given inevitable precipitation even as what’s laid ahead only led to a wide open field of uncertainty to be entangled on and to the enormity of the odds that called upon to measure one’s mettle beyond the

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bounds of artistic aspirations. As I hinted before, I ought to embrace art more of a pleasure than a struggle but it comes more and more to be receding and and the true state of things coming into form. Progress of daily life at DBM took a turning point when S.F. Tan died two years into my stint. Whereas, before he died I could not discern any scruple about anything - my inherent nature had just been not noticeable going under his shadow, as my characteristics are cast behind his that supervenes to where attention is basically turned. I had the reason to exist because of him and it was enough. After his death, though, when I was cast into the open,things turned out differently as, in particular instances, humorous flatteries soon sometimes began to be replaced by inquisitive sensitivities. At first I had a time with them being an object of praise and appreciative esteem, especially in being conspicuous while performing liaison functions from office to office. As time went on, when I could not make a concrete positive step to show substance in being connected to them and elevate my status with respect to the nature of their career, a sense of boredom occasionally set in. Still, I would facilitate impressing them myself by engaging in blatant flatteries or amuse them that inflates their ego to dampen the ennui from time to time, such that I had bought my time and continued to go on. Or I would just display an air of straightforward sincerity and plain toil in discharging my given work. What it exudes anyway, however much energy involved, is projecting a picture that slights them, when the efforts cast would only prove inimical, and on purely working for no pronounced far reaching reassurances that, in the long run, generated doubt and distaste. In a situation when they were viewed as drawn into their lot in a combative air, their voices speak as one and they themselves project as the one whose rights are being infringed upon. And rumors will resound in the halls of DBM. I can only do nothing but to backtrack and take stock and wonder where the barren place I am in. I never took any sense of genuine gratification for having stumbled into DBM’s lot, more so when S.F.Tan died. Yet even when he lived, I still could not fathom how long I could have fared well. My assumption into the way was akin to having found a diversionary occupation where to dilly dally round and round, that rivets the mind in their motley and agitated atmosphere. what I entered into made a mark on the psyche to generate feelings that have begotten a corresponding state of mind. There will be methods to make things go, but basic nature stays as a prime component where new things take their shapes. Entrenched as I was by my

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personal history that shaped the nature of my character, a new experience it will undergo makes little influence to reshape it. How strong an influence to give it an impact does not actually tilt into changing something that is already a hardened entity. And as for me it was already too late to begin again. My early life had itself gone to a chronicle of memorable experiences that correspondingly helped shape the nature of my character in the earlier stage of vicissitudes growing up. The intimacy and imprint of the place to one's psyche that embodies the formative stage is hard to change once set in a very engaging reality as I did, which later entered me into conflicting values as I stumbled into the government atmosphere. And so do the traits and values that imparted me in late teens that only became a consummation of the already acquired nature. The succeeding narrative offers some glimpse about an existence that defines a difference of a reality and a person in which it is shaped from another to entangle with it that comes to show later. In Matutinao, a coastal barrio south of Cebu where I grew up since early in youth, was a place borne with every essence of nature that also instills the nature of a person growing up with all its wonders and primitivity. In those times, I had already a close affinity to it, and felt as if I were one of the elemental parts, fondly frequenting the pristine rivers inland, to mountainous forests and cliffs and seaside caves and gorges. I loved to explore the mysteries it hides, and I developed a physical build of an athlete out of sheer propensity to become absorbed and handily ply throughout its realm. I would swim to the high seas alone, and back, out of pure thrill risking shark’s prey. I partly grew up in Leyte till grade 4 but entreated my mother even earlier on, to spend my schooling there, in southern Cebu, the place of my aunt Trinidad Duque, or aunt Trining as she was called, who passed away while I was a freshman. Such periods till my high school years were crucial to the shaping of my basic character. The tiny barrio by the coast and immediate mountainous areas through which the crystal clear river flows directly into the heart of the sleepy community is populated only by twenty houses. The river runs from upland forested recesses, downstream beside the church grounds, open court and - and to the river bridge, and by the primary school beyond, and few acacia trees at the back facing the shore and estuary. The road between the school and the adjacent church connects toward the main community with a one-way wooden bridge twenty-five meters long and about what the bus normally fits under which parallel slabs of wood

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laid to two sets of tires. The school grounds is directly bounded by rip-rap of boulders in open edges by the river which is fifteen feet in depth, too deep and danger prone enough for any school children nearby who don’t swim,-those country children were swimmers anyway, and don’t drown . About four kilometers from Matutinao, way upward through the river is a Kawasan waterfall about 24 ft. high, the edge to which the river flows is broken at the center by a jutting boulder. The folks and natives, long accustomed of calling it kawasan, which translates in english as “falls” itself has become generally adopted as its name, and hence, Kawasan Falls. A pathway leading toward the falls from the community-by- the-coast terminates a distance of a kilometer to it, where it (the falls) is not yet visible, but the incessant gush of water is already audible. Continued progress is by fording the river itself through knee and waist deep trek by a direction of a riverside as it passes by overhangs of vegetation and steep cliffs. To come to the falls’ upper level, one has to clamber from inside a dark cavernous maze of rock formations to emerge at the upper level of the falls vicinity. At an approach to the left, and while a more clever and stronger person reaches first, another catches his hand, or to add his height to reach for grasp, step on a shoulder on another below and be aided up. At times I come into these locations alone to catch freshwater prawns in a bamboo weavework trap till being caught in the fall of darkness. The width of the waterway from the edge of the falls is about 10 meters, and 100 meters upward is the location of an unfathomed natural pool at a length and width as of an olympic size swimming pool. The right portion of its length is walled with a towering cliff 100 ft. in height. It is jutted obliquely with medium size trees near the water growing on rock fissures and upward to the skyline, of a little smaller vegetation. The opposite side of the cliff-overhang is an upper continuation of the river by way of lower falls ten ft. high. And with a tolerable force of a falling water, it can be accessible beneath to its cavernous lower base of rocks yet with unexplored portions of dark recesses. Monkeys roam everywhere, some in droves, till the mountain ranges bordering on Matutinao, and others still venture into mountain sides and vegetated cliffs directly above a coastal road swinging on trees. One km. from the barrio is a strongly gushing spring whose hole is four feet in diameter which issues from out a rocky mountainside of the river. The folks call it Tubod which means spring itself, from where they fetch their drinking water through a fat bamboo tube carried on shoulders though for me, the purity of the river itself in these vicinities is to where I directly drink. It is also a common destination for the folks and visitors alike for

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bathing and picnic, being set like a tiny dam in a pile of large stones to still the river flow to a length of a swimming pool to swim on, the other end in which the spring gushes out and from which commence pool’s length with a rocky elevated base beside the spring to dive from. I ought to dive from this platform as a starting point in a routine swimming regimen from end to end and back and forth even as still few people ever came at the time. When typhoons and rainy season come, the stone barriers are all washed away and the folks build it again and again in a repetitive cycle as it is destroyed at recurrence of storms through time. The road bridge at the barrio is situated 200 meters from the river estuary on which seashores are bounded by promiscuous reefs against the abrupt depth of the blue. At times whales are seen to swim closer to the school. Immediately at the back of line of houses of community by the road are foothills adjacent to the coast above which is an excellent panoramic view over the ocean and Negros Island around Kanlaon volcano. I grew and explored all these places as a boy up to my teens. This was where it also showed a first indication of my inclination to paint when I unearthed a World War II soldier’s rusty helmet at the backyard of my aunt’s house. I cleaned, painted and made a lettering on it on a self made brush from a human hair. A penchant to draw became clearer when I randomly painted later on, an imposing face of a famous hollywood actor, and later on copied another, a portrait of Pres. Marcos. My sacristan friend doubted whether I did it myself and how I came up with the likeness when I am mostly seen as what a typical country boy would be: a firewood gatherer, coconut picker and climber or a company of fishing crews, and so did the native fishermen in disbelief who weekly held meetings at our aunt’s house to confer and get their share of earnings. My aunt once implored me to stay in Matutinao after I came back from Mindanao on a two- month vacation at our cousin’s farm in Valencia, Bukidnon after I quit school in college. But I longed to work for good and rightly found a job at Tacloban Coca-cola Plant. Through the short period in college, just about a year and a half after being formally introduced to visual arts, I became a fully devoted and serious artist. In college, My master Martino Abellana rendered an actual charcoal portrait of me in a class art session after which he gave it to me as a gift that I framed, kept and cared for as a thing of value. My uncle though Felicisimo Mesa, of whose house we temporarily stayed in Tacloban while I was already making rounds as a painter at Coca-cola, removed it from where I hang in our quarters and never found it again anymore. He himself was a transportation head of the Coca-cola, but I entered the advertising division on

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my own sole initiative alone. When I was eighteen then, my cousin Willie Mesa who was a 25yo Tour of the Philippines veteran, the country’s major cycling event, became my helper at the Coke. I was an admirer of his own cycling feats anyway. It came to be gradually clearer my short stint at the Coke would grow to become more engaging to cause an ineradicable mental imprint in later times. At 18, I already became a contractor of the company and had decided to live separately for good. I rented a shanty at a seaside community at a rate of P30.00 per month, the Sagkahan district of Tacloban which houses’ structural posts are bored on the seaside shallows with floors elevated from sea level enough to be unreached in high tides. Life at the Coke would be equally as engaging as it was to what life had been of my childhood in Matutinao. For I was now already on my own of which it offered me the means that I already excellently met. The setting of an impending major struggle was excellent. The Coke is situated in the Visayas and my contemporaries are Visayans and the excellent stomping ground for art is relevant to such a setting of simplicity of life. And I could always go back to my childhood’s place for that matter. In my youth the course of life was already set to make a way for a career that I have fairly shown competence in a relatively short time. In a limited period in college I had already competed amongst the foremost artists in Cebu and cultivated close friendship with the best. They came to teach art later at UP and organized group or solo exhibitions and won prestigious art competitions. I looked upon to be fairly comparable or even achieve more than the commendable deed they had shown in the path I had chosen to take and concentrate on the art practice detached from a prevalent artistic influence, while drawing an initial income from connections to Coke yet to be abreast from time to time with them. I had known of my master to be an impressionist just like Amorsolo who was himself his own former master. But he exuded much enthusiasm teaching art himself. And I equally took the sincerity he imparted notwithstanding the style of painting. And wherever I was, I always thought that art practice is omnipresent. Whenever possible, I occupied myself with line drawing and painting from life that has just become a habit and as automatic as breathing. I had perceived everything in life as painting undone. And all of my relatives, from closest to distant ones, except Ben Martinez, a distant relative and painter who also made an important part on my making, never understood me. I had the fervor for great toil till my body ached, and was already used to limping home after a backbreaking

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work. I incessantly painted and sketched spontaneously until all my art materials spent stopped me. Yet I had found an endless means to replenish the necessities with the newly found opportunities at the Tacloban Coca-cola plant. Meanwhile, my uncle became anxious of my uncommon perseverance and motivations in the company he worked. He did not understand the kind of personal characteristic I embody so that the perceivable nature and tenacity I held was alienable to him. But officials concerned in my connection to Coke were the exact opposite of him in their equally and mutually spirited interaction to the stimulation and energy I exuded which in itself is a prevalent air among them. My fervor for great toil simply meant a selfless effort to make things happen. Obstacles were unknown to me when freedom of struggle simply meant spending time and energy alone without the burden of people coming headlong as a distraction. When I looked upon the brilliance and resplendence of nature, I doubted men of wisdom can remain to stand aloof and be content with doing nothing. The rigors of perseverance with religious fervor and innocence can not be stopped when what chiefly mattered was how to satiate the drive and appetite for work. It would not altogether be an obstacle when skill indeed delivers it; nevertheless, it had only been construed as pleasure. And obstacles would become just seemingly a distant reality to be easily cast off and disregarded in a dominant air of positive attitude that propels given the motion of its own to go on. My success was destined by the preordained track already laid ahead of me. I painted and drew without complexities and concerns but art. The spirit of art flowed in my veins. And I had cultivated a booming world with which to act and had been proud of being groomed to depict it. I began to understand and develop dexterity with which to handle what I perceive in nature in terms of painting. Production was prolific to a degree corresponding to the state of high motivation. As I practically cultivated friendship with artists in the region with comparable talents and shared and enthusiastically exchanged artistic knowledge that also wrought into my mannerisms and deportment, the kind of nature characteristic of what it is classified, appeared as rare in the general air of mundane life around me, especially with that of my ordinary province mates when nobody had similarly exuded the things like it. Indeed, devoted and serious artists are actually of rare stock. I never wanted to leave the provinces of Leyte and Cebu anyway, the latter of which has high artistic viability and the former being the place of my birth with the relevant employment opportunities. The disadvantages of leaving college was only offset by the thought of being reassured there was a chance to practice my vocation on the

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proximity of the right outdoor subjects and the corresponding wide areas of artistic setting in the Visayas area, especially around Matutinao. Diplomas have become altogether unnecessary to artists who work and grow by their own activities alone. Early in life I had learned to make a living on odd jobs. Even before my advent at the Coke I cultivated close acquaintances with people I came across with a high sense of family. While in Leyte my occasional visits to my relatives and friends in Cebu created much fuss about missing one another, and so to the reverse as I almost equally lingered on long term duration. I had the roots and familiar endearment to the two provinces, but I grew different from its constituents, having gone on to become an artist, of whom nobody understood the significance even as they took possession and were proud of having in possession some of my sketches. I had painted a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper 4x8 ft. in size for the living room of my aunt’s house in Matutinao when I was 16. And so copies of Magellan’s landing in Mactan island in various scenes for the house’s balcony and living room, which became the initial curiosity to greet visitors who were accommodated to the only host house for such a tiny tourist destination;it was also the prime host for people of various purposes. It was even preferable than the convent which lacked inhabitants to extend hospitality and fill the air for just a sense of family. Nuns who are supposed to reside there prefer to stay at my aunt’s house and play games and connect with the people. By imploring my mother to come and spend my primary education there, many of my other cousins also saw the fair air to later follow suit to stay for long and imbibe the every possible nourishment its excellent atmosphere can impart, discovering purity and peace and became part of the motley members of the family. My mother once brought me with her when I was a toddler, and by hazy recurrence of distant memory about her fording a waist deep river near Tubod carrying me sat on her neck, a feeling of essence of nature never dissipated in my subconscious, heightened by wonder I could have slipped and thrown my tiny body and drown, till it made me fully aware growing up so as to practically draw me toward the place. There I learned to swim outright upon my school transfer as a 9yo, thrilled by the view of the river from the school window that just overflowed the school grounds on high tides. And at opportune times I found the benefits of jogging uphill in my adolescence, and have reached the farthest heights wondering the deafening silence of untrodden mountains to where shouts echoed from place to place. To the region where the waterfalls eternally groan, or at a

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nearer observations, could be likened to an incessant blast of water, break the spell of tranquility. And from a certain point it lay hidden from beyond a towering cliff, yet still, audible in its eerie reverberations, blends with the cry of monkeys and tweeting of birds. I thought then - if I could only make use of the purity of nature in a way (not such that pollutes), it was long before indications of my tendencies to be artistically inclined became evident, an early times of far off obliviousness, and had no clear idea how to fairly treat it. Nightlife at Matutinao was of an equally unsullied existence, more pristine in my time while still unreached by electricity. We often slept at night in a hut there by the sea, fronting a peebly shore, or gone fishing in the night with fishing nets for tiny shrimps that emit nocturnal phosphorescence upon the edge of the reefs like a firefly. The shore of Matutinao is peebly with shiny stones and so is of the river bed, which is fordable waist at the lowest ebb around the area near the school, and more than a fathom on high tides. Church, school and court to the south is separated by the bridge from the main community of few houses to the north. In my first arrival at the place, I caught notice of a dilapidated, defunct, and deserted ferry boat for cattle anchored at all times. It merely served as an end point or base of playful children to swim to and back. It was finally shipwrecked on shore after a strong typhoon. The memories that blur the earliest time past would only appear as a myth as to how it plied and lived the prime of its life, and that, I have never known, since my advent had become only a reckoning to the process of decay. We only used to board by climbing through the rope of anchor and diving from atop the highest deck of the idle vessel into the blue. As it gradually ruins, my subconscious also feels, by degrees, the dissipation of pristine innocence as when its natural myth is dampened by the boat's present existence, a hard, blatant fact that rusts with an innocent mind and to fade with its disintegration. In such times, Matutinao’s supply of drinking water was connected in tubings running directly from remote mountain springs in the vicinity near the falls, and issuing a very strong pressure to reach each 20 homes without the aid of a pump. The plan to construct a hydroelectric plant on the waterfalls and build a feeder road so that it would be easier for visitors and tourists to make their trek, is actually one early step ahead to decadence. Sceneries unspoiled and without the eye-block of cottages that was rearing to proliferate would hold on to the sanctity of nature. And development should not have to be instrumental to the idea about people

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depending on the efforts of another in order to reach their goal with lesser difficulty when it speaks about adventure or natural purity. My aunt, a midwife by profession, was no longer active professionally upon my advent, and her clinic by the foothill across the road adjacent to her house was already closed from service a long time ago after my arrival. Like the ferry boat, I could only surmise about how active it was in its prime. Yet if it would only die down in decay, and not change its aspect into something new that corrupts its history, so be it. For my aunt was an integral part of Matutinao which does not need a better midwife if changes will only bring things in vain. As she had been exceedingly active in her prime to make her well-known among neighboring towns and barrios, my fresh arrival only marked a long and stimulating past since dead, as evidenced by the cobwebs inside the clinic borne with traces of well being and humanitarian duty, as she already aging at 83, was a respected elderly, paid with visits by people from all walks of life. Nevertheless, I was altogether fond of agreeing on some occasion of her quipping I belong to her lot, when circles of our relatives fool around and grandstand each other about their discordant ways, especially in such times when they begin to notice the fuss about my sketching and drawing from life. So to speak, I had come up with a drawing of a charcoal portrait for my two nieces in the actual while they were still toddlers. And it was framed and took good care of to last. Matutinao, 81 km southeast of Cebu and 8 km. from its town of Badian connected by a picturesque national road is closely lined by hills and cliffs by the coast. The seashore is narrowly bounded by knee deep coral reefs, some, to protrude out the water, yet upon a next step is a bottomless deep. From some winding roads directly overlooking the sea below in various elevations, occasional whales are seen to swim up and down the surface so near at stones-throw seemingly beguiling children while blowing fountains. And some gorges by the seaside are directly accessed to sea level. We used to throw anchors on rocks on such rocky coastal places in neighboring Matutinao and find shades in the water under overhanging trees; And we also used to explore arched rock formations. As I grew to my late teens, the beauty of these places gradually for me became somewhat impalpable as for my intermittent absence in studies at Cebu City, yet for the incipient fuss in development that actually came later of which I was reluctant to participate, the more as my aunt died when I was 18. I was about to end my college studies when a feeder road to the falls was already being constructed

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by the riverside to replace the narrow pathways. It gradually came to keep me away upon finding work at Coca-cola, and yet, began to be perturbed about yearning to return. And little by little though, I was actually being dragged away even farther from then on and missed the times when we used to sing and play guitar all days at Ilaya, in an outback inland through the river- one km from the barrio, not to mention other merriments we occasioned in remote areas, inhabited only by people whom we all know as friends. Our times at the Ilaya area are fond of the good times by the fact my aunt owned a land planted with coconut and fruit trees, maintained by her tenant farmer Pascual, to where we often go trekking in a way by the river and imbibe the tranquility of nature. The sincerity for my profession drove me to work hard and relatively changed my former younger ways in growing up, cherishing the thought that an excellent place of work for art is just somewhere around the corner. The Coke personnel are equally a rigorously industrious and spirited bunch of individuals with whom I was proud to be part of the family. When my cousin qualified for the Tour of the Philippines, and he being also an employee sponsored as a cyclist by the company at the time, Coke took turns in busying preparations to welcome him upon passage of the leg of the event by putting up a streamer on the archways of San Juanico bridge, and it was usually to encourage efforts of gutsy and spirited individuals, the more if he is a member of the company itself with which I was also flattered being a cousin of him. Coke officials and employees themselves were open- minded persons and inclined to encourage people who find a way to conquer admirable feats -save my uncle himself, who was wont to contradict people that work hard. When they speak of encouragement to their fellow employees, they also give them freedom and leave it on their own to do what one wants for himself, yet they mutually share their sentiments as an equal regardless of official position. These personal characteristic just encompasses a replacement for the beauty and grandeur of the countryside with whom can be depended upon as adoptable against a city’s hubbub and in the midst of a seeming folly of a multitude and never dampen the nature of one’s spirit not used to motley strain of complex interaction. The positively fastidious nature of these people I have met directly at once in a very first and only great opportunity actually carves a place for practical wellbeing. And I thought of my return as having to bring to the Matutinao folks something better and new and more engaging which is further enhanced with values that nature shares.

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I often slept there at the fishermen’s quarter by the sea, with the folks themselves side by side, staring at the stars in heaven above and while lying in bed wondering as though death would not come. There was a sense of eternal repose in Matutinao even in life. It transcends the sense of greatness of all my existence. The air of timelessness it bears shot up my will and spirit. People from neighboring towns and barrios don’t go to church of their own places but to the church of Matutinao. The view of ethereal landscape and atmosphere, of the group of large shady trees at foothills by the side of the tiny community, and the narrow terrain for the settlement against a mountainous backdrop, directly facing the expanse of the sea, and while one is atop a plateau overlooking it, make it a perfect place for communion with God. I was able to conquer the impossible, being shaped and charged with tremendous physical and spiritual strength, fresh from these places, yet too precocious to have done feats not commonly expectable for persons my age. At 18, I was already a contractor of my own work exploits which I myself carried out, that is, to paint murals on building walls 20 stories at the highest, in my own sole initiative alone. In two months, I finished fifteen wall paintings, a total for the Coca-cola company’s yearly task of repainting. And I chiefly relied on intuition in color and scheme and scaffolding construction and installation. It was my fifteenth lease on life from then on. When I was in downtown Tacloban occasioned with the parade of stars, I felt a sense of deprecation and reticence, as they sought to see who would happen to stare at them that I accidentally did. And I ask myself what have they done worthy of the adulation that they sought? I go to the nook, and silently to oblivion, but I would be reminded of the things they might not have done and yet sought to be known for it. But silently I go to the nook with a relief that I have not acted in excess that betrayed myself. This orderly city of Tacloban will be occasionally disturbed by degenerative air of complexities that different visitors bring. By coming the stars were wanting to be admired by the folks, oblivious of the fact that these places nurtured those which look up to them as not admirable enough. I stood adamantly about a parade, like being ill-at-ease against any ironic apparition if only to stand in Tacloban. It could not have mattered much if I spent most of my time in the Visayan region. I had nothing to lose but much more to gain. Even if my job was not only unsuitable to the practical nature of my profession, it was also incipient to the more

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relevant development to unfold. It was aptly suitable for being able to work with people, in a very limited period. From a country lad I quickly transformed into a youthful, motivated contractor, with a knack for harmonious rapport with my superiors and fellow workers. My job, being mainly outdoors, gave me a chance to stomp on myriad grounds that only cultivated my further endearment toward the region. I painted a billboard at one end of San Juanico Bridge at Leyte’s side that was readily an excellent view to motorists leaving Leyte for Samar. And another one I did on a building facing the sea of Tacloban City would not be so much as visible to the city’s hubbub when its back is facing them, as it would be an excellent vantage point for ships at port call. On one occasion, an advertising official was astonished to see I had rendered a Sunkist orange on a 5 story building wall so brilliant and fresh-looking it had never been seen before the likes of their previous painters that consequently he took much pride in having me in their workforce. After I accomplished all the murals, in a yearly repainting, they never wanted me to lose them anymore and looked for a way to continue my services in the giant company. But I worked with much toil and concentration like the way I painted in oil outdoors. That was my inherent way wherever fate would take me, and so like of the wholehearted sense of family and companionship in Matutinao where we sang and held merriments into the depth of provincial night and cultivated personal closeness and acquaintance to make absence stir a recurrent want to relive the good old days, so is of the momentous time at the Coke which I would surely miss similarly. At 18, I became fully entrenched in the Visayas region spiritually, psychologically and personally. And drastic severance of such bonds could only be caused by great omission that tends to undervalue everything, and beyond my own powers to contravene. I had loved to witness the break of dawn and the freshness of the morning, and was habited to rise early for any undertaking to carry it out with punctuality. I myself was honored in an Elementary School graduation as the most punctual pupil. And to the time I regarded art as a lifelong struggle, I treated any other efforts whatsoever worthy of equal sincerity and dedication. As I reported for daily work at the Coca-cola upon being integrated to the workforce, I easily cultivated a sense of work harmony among veteran advertising painters. It was here where I learned how to reciprocate respect with superiors and drew their encouragement in return. It was here where I learned how to find a way in the discharge of responsibility that has begotten due results. Within the bounds of mutual interaction that usually begets a coordinated process of engaging in an

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exemplary performance, an onlooker might comment on watching one at work, “What a difficult and dangerous job he is doing!” And it would be disagreed.”Why would it be hard for you, you are not the one doing it, and to him it is only easy!” In an intensified activity, the imposing size of every wall murals and billboards give an air of involvement in a very engaging way. A vantage point of a location at an excellent setting that made a lasting imprint to ones memory is derivable of an experience embibing an air of success. The searing heat on the wall of a building in a scaffold at work on a popular commercial design is a testimony of an intense struggle that essentially becomes a sense of personal stride. And in a very short time, of less than half a year I was at the height of such a fleeting stint in the advertising department making rounds with veteran painters at Coca-cola Tacloban. The lone and surviving contractor of the company’s yearly repainting of wall murals preceding myself being my distant relative Benjamin Martinez, who was just as equally resourceful to make his own stamp was also informative of some of its history whose account only made him stand out above the rest. The only other contractor that coexisted with him was unfortunate enough to fall in an accident at work. Upon his fall, entangled in a cable wire, and electrocuted, landed on a roof 15 ft below and consequently made him incapacited for life. Ben, was never ever employed at the Coke on a daily basis before, connected only as a contractor but just one of a kind of painter of rare skill and excellent personal character who is also adept about good relations with his connections. Yet later on he was just as aptly groomed as the sole and the only very first painter in the San Miguel Beer division for a long time, in which compound is just within the same as the Coke, its sister company. And it was a time when he found respite from wall painting tasks upon my advent, eventually giving him enough time to attend to San Miguel’s advertising needs. I still had never known Ben closely when I departed Balud after my Elementary 3rd grade, so much so about his making as a painter in our Barrio, though I hazily remembered I was told theirs is a family which is our relative. I had never known how it came for Ben to come out differently from most of our province mates and learn painting in the heart of poor fishing and coastal settlement of mostly rogues, drunkards, gamblers and brash folks. Ironically, he only reached grade 3, but still, I never discounted his essential value and contribution to my growth.

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As I left Balud at age eight, I was still innocently and haphazardly unaware its atmosphere was indeed counterproductive to a better development, as I was mainly swayed to embrace Matutinao for its queerness and outlandishness. To have fallen to work the brush was wholly instinctive and by an inherent caprice, in such a place also that nobody personified as an object to follow through. To the delight of my family circles, our pumpboats got its first lettering Sto. Niño and decorations all over the body. I visited Tacloban for the first time while in 3rd yr. high school since I left Leyte and met and known as what Ben had become at that point: already married, renting a house by a highway near downtown Tacloban, working on his trade “art and sign '' as for many jeepney route signboards he displayed in his space. He was augmenting his means of living on odd jobs about his trade while he was already a known Coke contractor. When I occasioned to go to Balud later coinciding his own occasional return, we eventually met , exchanging greetings and pleasantries in which he shared the basic know-how about his trade, I, having been still a burgeoning lad in early stages about it. Then upon a flash of thought, he asked me haphazardly without cause to accompany him to his hut, which I just lately known to be always closed. To my surprise, I found it to be filled with beautiful paintings hung all over upon our entry, which is a queer fixture among all other neighbouring huts promiscuously placed with various kinds of fishing materials. After a while, before my return to Cebu, I was back in Tacloban again to see he had a newly opened shop downtown where his other framed pieces were already displayed. In time I returned to Matutinao with much enhanced knowledge and encouragement about the trade. And after high school graduation I took fine arts at UP for good, and went on to only three semesters so far for a four-year course. I dissipated a sense of intense emptiness and depression after I was forced to cut short the studies of my cherished vocation by traveling to Mindanao, as I have already mentioned, alone, and for the first time, as a must as it should, to the far off outback of Bukidnon near the foot of Mt. Kitanlad, where neighboring huts are kilometers in distance. My farmer cousin would descend to town for a week to make it solely on my own which offer me enough time for reflection. Here I cleared and plowed for four months for no certain end. When pressures and emotions died down and realities set in, I undertook a fresh, brief return for the last time. Firstly, direct to Matutinao where friends and Aunt Trining herself bid me stay and resume the customary good old existence. I lingered for a while when the air is much filled with

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nostalgia and while outings and celebrations within the family circles runs at short intervals, barrio fiesta included.But instinct and sense of mission told me I must go and do something, for the “track” already laid ahead of me. It was in this occasion of my travels that directly ushered me in the succeeding events to fastidiously lodged myself into the Coca-cola Company, charged with so much drive and ambition, refreshed from period of self-sacrifice and soul-searching, and now again finally throw myself into exploits that literally forced me to tread a into thin line bordering between life and death. Ben, by this time, was already irregularly connected with the SMC and had already moved near the plant. He being the surviving veteran of the job of yearly repainting on wall murals, accorded me some advice as I had just eventually made work commitments on my own, but had to make my own sole decisions after all. He felt gratified by my assumption to a work of which he was currently burdened to answer a call, when the SMC had already been added to his clientele. Ben was even a little bit surprised I made to enter Coke's advertising dept. alone. We had extended much mutual respect to each other, though I was 17 and he was 35. My uncle at the Transportation Dept. somewhat became more anxious about my instant and unexpected assumption into the rare and select men of the trade without initial apprenticeship - a newcomer also needed to master and familiarize the company’s logo, so that he would become slightly jealous of an independent stimulation in my activities that seemed to bypass him. He himself was beset by intrigues in his division that finally dislodged him to be assigned and demoted to a yard supervisor. It was because of an obvious downturn in my uncle’s career that made him perhaps show a cold reception in the instantly surprising and direct appearance of my talent. He was replaced by a young engineer at the height of their intrigue involving division chiefs whom others also normally acknowledged and recognized Ben’s talents. My uncle gradually rose from the ranks through sheer industry. My sudden entry to perform outright within the level of the tested and proven might have taken him aback, more to the fact that it entailed a latent concurrence within the field involving Ben whom I often conferred and who came to have frequented with the functions of his rivals. As I executed jobs inside the compound while my uncle too was discharging his own duties of which we made occasional encounters, I noticed him to perceive me in a different eye than he was to often perceive me as his ordinary

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nephew. That last mental imprint about him and other relatives that bade me farewell, I was to bring my way in my journeys as I left Tacloban that would remain vivid for the rest of my life. I eventually left on a voyage set and they were there present in my departure in that sullen ungiving demeanor at the pier. Throughout my journey, it was but a time of reckoning about relegating my fate to the unknown, as I did while still divining in my home province about the consequence of daring into an arduous commitment to render wall murals still in my teens, with only sheer courage and coming from almost nothing, though the latter there were concrete indications more perceptible to viability and affinity to me. I had only a hazy idea about what a Manila reception could be. And there it smacked of early derailment upon coming to sight, to which wedged me further into inevitable consequences. My time in Manila marked the significance of my own sole wisdom to take, if I had to choose it myself alone and determine which way was amicable to me the most, when I can actually parry an impending greater mess, and avoid a brimming complexity in the air.

Nevertheless, I, with one companion named Butoy, a nephew of S.F. Tan himself, who would recognize him at once on sight, boarded a bus to his residence after coming from every inconvenience that we underwent on our path. I was swayed to go with him (Butoy)-being amenable to not abandon them altogether, to solicit

S.F. Tan’s help by his (Butoy’s) own prodding he being himself a first degree nephew. At that juncture I could have deviated anyplace anywhere, to where I could gamble even in pennilessness and hunger. A period of raw privation and suffering could be let it come to pass at an opportune time; it alone doesn’t warp horizons and doesn”t derail impetuosity. There would only be wounds that would fully heal. At length, we already “hit land” and If I am to navigate alone, and leave Butoy altogether and be lost throughout a mass of people in a city, it could still be a convenience rather than literally being lost barely swimming at sea. Perhaps, little by little, I may rise from the gutter if gutter I may end up, and the muddling of my character, infecting my psyche and sapping the prime of my energies would not be as much grievous for the same trauma I will undergo on the adverse reality I was headed to be engulfed. But, here I could not just leave the party of our group lest I might be perceived as insensitive to the sentiments of our collective endeavor. Anyway, Butoy would finally go back to Balud later, disenchanted of the whole affair,

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but I, as was my customary predetermination, had to press ahead and become absorbed in the fuss leading up to my DBM ``capers”. I could not so much take for great issues what necessaries to arise in F.S.Tan’s lot- I was more used to hardships than it entails, yet it did not as much demanded psychological readjustment which situations I was just commonly familiar in hardships constantly hounding me, than of the perplexity I was soon to be absorbed in the DBM. Hardships had been part of my life all along, and the nature of my character had been basically shaped to it. Even if already ingrained in a nature with affinity to isolation of pure hard work, to be lodged into complex and disturbing issues affecting the work environment at DBM, had become a consequence too much to tackle. And it so happened that it never gave me a chance to jump off the train. I was thrusted by so many plain circumstances that can not be normally dashed. I was even looked upon as a hope by our impoverished family back home, now that I happen to land in Malacañang. When the adverse reality somewhat made itself initially felt, my younger sister took the audacity to come and see for herself if it is actually going well as it generated anxiety when I failed to make further contacts. She however only cried upon our momentary meeting when I had sworn I will never ever come back.

As S.F. Tan had already passed away, I have now come up with a dual mental perspective: one that assumes in overt conduct of enlivened association as deemed “relevant”, and the covert thought processes to psychologically sustain myself throughout the way. It came to carry a burden of so much scruples upon an assumption into the fray at the DBM that I had to unburden everything that I may be more enlightened and become more resourceful in making judgement in such defining moments. My characteristic nature is shaped in a calling not identical to people that the DBM holds while the situation is in a stage of struggle for identity. There would normally have to arise a contest of wills if it has to persist going side by side that has no common cause for one another in a pace of development. In the absence of S.F.Tan’s cover, I had to engage in a connectivity that tends to directly dig into the idiosyncrasies of their mundane cares as an act of participation. Now that I have to go on my own, I can only likely cling by dashing off my inherent propensities and be carried along to the outstanding flow. But to me, the entrenched nature of my character is also a part of the degree of stimulation in conducting things that is

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always part of my subconscious. And it constitutes a kind of mentality at an equal degree of responses and consideration in both covert and overt aspects. Of what my personality was made of is also to what measure it would take so far as to consider a given matter which in both overt and deceptive circumstances, be attuned to their wildest capriciousness and ecstatic abandon as my own nature had been used to it before for my own original reasons. DBM is a broad expanse of a playing field and it could be too wide of an exercise of a fleeting activity when an individual can only be a tiny entity thrusted in to make a difference. Even a little while after S.F. Tan’s demise, I still managed a friendly and playful association with DBM personnel, my adverse consciousness still of no perceptible indications to show, the air being still filled with introductory and observational stir. As time went on however, I became constrained to feign my interaction behind my motive, as it offered me no clear direction at all plying about their field. I could not posit any goal at all about lengthening my reach in their kind of career, and so the process of taking the pace ahead is drawing motivations from my own inner convictions to go on. Somewhere out there, I might find the way out. In the meantime I had to wade into a choppy life in government in a diffuse focus to various angles about them, and yet just to be caught up in triviality for no meaningful consequence.

It was a dilemma of how to deal with people of mostly accountants, economists and lawyers, when the pinch of reality began to be finally felt wondering how a career could be furthered in such an unlikely air filled with adamant and indifferent mentalities. This is what I see as a complete opposite if I would be stirred to raw excitement being within the artistic circles. While I could stand mingling with intellectuals at best and able to stomach fooling around with the most unscrupulous employees at worst, it was by no means a step ahead that bought my way to actually chart pertinent horizons. Upon an entrance I had seen a great expanse of space to be traversed replete with so many unworkable calls of attention. The wise ones were wiser how to make things more complicated for a person that bore diverse expediency and assert a discipline of their own to make paths cross, and the foolish ones muddle the scenario the most by engaging a personal character to rubbish and nonsense. It was a given fact to live up to the reality where it had become a life of deceit and pretense. Artists see things objectively as they are, and when they reserve the right

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to keep it that way, while in an awkward situation, they have to dislodge themselves from the grasp of its spell to see it more clearly and go on with them side by side with a lucid eye. Otherwise, the reality itself of which he is in influences him that blurs the vision. I had to descend into the unnatural but overtly do as they do and make them reassured that I am one of them. I had even to endure blatant and outright abuse and superficially cringe in reaction, and carry on to the progress generally accepting it all and pressing ahead corrected and reassured and thus, to have woven a stronger sense of family. Still, I could see them clearly how it goes in relation to my adverse self and in connection to the true nature of my subconscious. This trend though is a snag in itself, being carried into the flow for no palpable concrete way of real meaning that can be advanced. It is being lost in limbo, delving or dilly-dallying, trapped into another world to waste both one's time and energy. To while away a time of one’s prime and still, of a developmental stage, is missing outstanding chances and sworn commitment, being caught and absorbed in trivial and diversional activities, when it would span an extensive time scale. But being still in a formative stage as it is, what circumstances to come on the way dilutes the nature of a person’s natural proclivities and beget an affected tendency to become integral to the acquired deportment. His purity would already be sullied to alter his immediate disposition as inherent propensities by which it is acted upon in direct impulse is rendered passive by what presently bogs and prevails. I might become an artist of great repute otherwise, but to have stumbled upon a field removed from what would have made it burgeon, the alternate burgeoning is an offshoot of the realities of the digression and where inner nature bear only a passive role. We can also become fired in a different game, reach for the best of it, hold a significant role to play, and rejoice at the height given the enthusiasm entails. And this we speak a Malacañang air of braggadocio, grandiloquence and flatteries. I started time there like an obedient pupil, oblivious of what lies ahead. The orientation to familiarize the field, the subsequent embrace of the organization and people of which I was being initiated into at the outset that summoned the call to take equal consideration about them, formally lodged myself into the fray. I got the I.D. like the employees flouted and daily stomped the grounds trodden by high officials of nat’l. gov’t. level complete with paging audio systems and be instilled an air akin to the privileged. We exchanged pleasantries and interacted with co-employees to engage in the prevalent atmosphere of busyness and activity. A bonafide member of a seemingly privileged class has the proud stride anywhere he goes upon being known

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personally which inflates the ego. And as an act of oneness and unity, and driven by my own subconscious used to exalted things, I also imbibe such a feeling in coming up with “riveting” and showy functions within the organization to the point of ecstatic involvement. Especially when it would be of a Malacañang, and a Marcos era at that, an air of corresponding focus is intense. The stamping ground is filled with drive and haste in harmony. And if one will lag away from a day-to-day pace of progress from the consistent flow by an omission that seems to be not attuned to it, he would rightly feel estranged and insecured. There are people who project themselves of self-pity and full of want in order to keep up with the mainstream. In best conditions, they are bound in a sense of camaraderie. But they will not fail to notice a slightest indication of an alienable stimulus object that can be overblown to the issue. A protracted and tedious struggle would make one watch people - in a repetitive cycle, come and go, and stay oneself standing still as it should. The organizational restructuring, the flow of personnel to their ascent in rank, the changes in officialdom, how in any manner a person matures in his chosen ways, how they discard a non- competitive, all these and more, in a period elapsed, must be a reckoning how it relates to my own nature and steadfastly remain a reality removed from it. Coordination would only have been only taken for granted with no serious gesture to be involved more deeply in the given event. I was a witness to milestones and others faded away, and never carved a name for myself. I met new ones innocent at first and emerged cocky and domineering later on. I can not engage a due reaction from being personally slighted in an atmosphere that is embedded in work pressures and intense exigencies nor had I the luxury to be openly embarrassed about it. They could never see me angry. A “makeshift” temperament created to play within their reality can not overtly react by an inner sensitivity behind it. My mere participation is in a state of being suspended of which I was at time’s mercy until it snaps. I tried and tried to be loved, but It could never blossom. A passage of time encompassing a succession of events merely creates an imprint in the mind of the observer that defines the weight of his own situation. It is a wide range of activity within that a person in limbo and diversion can be told of, a budding artist that never practiced art but had gone astray. Lost in such a realm, It could be seen I also took the “pleasure” of having trodden the circles buying into their idiosyncrasies and enthusiasm. The time involved is having to work through to it to survive and to either “sink or swim” on the way. They took my talents in a trivial and improper way, others made fun or an

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outright insult to it, others still dismissed it as nonsense and rubbish altogether.Yet I got a great deal of will to enterplay and carry on, considering it a showdown of colorful stages “worth waging for”. The pomp and flamboyance in the air could blind anybody especially when one is so poor and desperate. Although my best skills had been rendered inexpedient, I got a temerity to linger on the hubbub that beckons participation and invitation to a showcase of abilities, but however great one is, it has to undergo the merit of patronage. Even an ordinary employee mingling in the flashy air could be habited to an aura of feeling special even when in truth he is actually an impoverished creature. Those little embarrassments and disenchantments in the organization were minor scruples when grandiose events dampened it and inundated with festive moods. Such is a kind of another wide picturesque world in which a mind could be riveted to and be immersed at an expanse of a reality too broad to consume a lifetime. Myriad lives has been lived who had been earning medals and honors and died dignified, of which, contrarily, measured on the weight of the phenomenon by a witness who can only “dilly-dally” round and round, when these people had the nonchalance to come and go in an unruffled way. The silence and solemnity of a religious occasion with bowed heads that speaks of sincerity and depth of soul I could only feign, more and more solidify their entrenchment to their “cause”. Yet it would be more calculable how much and how long could I cling to go on when closer intimation made shortcomings become more and more discernible. Diversionary consciousness with which it is to spend time and while the time away could also exhaust its basic usability. When the outward countenance to veil a true nature is already a “beaten track”, it becomes nonessential to tread again, setting boredom and real disgrace, and to eventually render me running out of time. At first they were fond of me as a newcomer with so many endless flatteries and encouraging words- though it still does not cause a palpable elevation to higher status. Without real convincing constructive progress to evolve, listlessness has just to set in, even if it is to repeat what has excited them the most. If they at least could only evince a disposition to show dissatisfaction, I myself would have no more ways to pamper them. For what I would show that pleased them beforehand could become an insult to them a second time around. By sheer manifestation of myself having exhausted all the means of feigned appearances to buy into their common trend has become a fixture so alienable and at worst, disgusting. Conversely, they would be indicative of a different picture to be seen, antagonistic, cruel, and full of loathing. Others of lowly standing in their lot

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project themselves as victims, in contradiction to myself as being a total opposite. The reality slips toward the grotesque when it opens a visual plane observable on them from seeing me change and making me also see them what they had not usually been. The area of diversion is going to a close when it can not be dealt with anymore. It is actually a grotesque reality even if seen independently, given a complete twist seen in the eye of the beholder who for a long time had been part and parcel of grandiose rendezvous and on the next instances transform them in an apparition so eerie. For their pride and “noble calling”, doors are still open if I will work my way and give in to the norm, which is ridiculous. It merely showed a propensity to pride and arrogance when it offers a motive to be entreated and begged in complete departure from ethical rationale. A twist in the reality in which they slipped into antagonism and disavowal, closed the door for a positive interaction especially when I can’t see anymore an objective stimulus to do so on their part. It would be a mendicant attitude to try at all, in which situations excites otherwise to respond on the reverse, the more about me having altogether exhausted all appeasement motivations. A total disengagement had been an inevitable consequence. Yet disengagement alone, in such a complex situation, created many repercussions when real nature gets exposed and settles into places. A psychological effect to endure upon a drastic change in the shifting of realities creates a forceful impact for the psyche. I had been caught in a prolonged period of pretense and deceit, which characteristics even become part of personal embodiment in a formative period to be a cunning actor at play, to acquiesce to what a prevalent air is like and be their trusted member. As it arrived to an extent of having me highly accorded as one of them, such recognitions would come out to be hollow after all, but when it evolved in pride and prejudice in oneness and harmony, it strikes discordant note to excite changes in their feelings, that bestirs extreme malice and disavowal with corresponding intensity. For what great basis they are found to embrace considerations is how precipitous they are bound to drop everything upon an instance of contradictory exposure, by the suddenness of its effects that prompts their denials. Their fury is weaned to the equal degree as to what extent they have lent their trust, here I am indeed a competent actor to have celebrated with their oneness and wild enthusiasm. And at the given spur, they would institute censure and denigrations accordingly, which is a strange and surprising sight. The DBM

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reality has woven so much buildup to excessive psychological agitation, I being driven into heights, devoid of real purpose and meaning and being fettered in an unwholesome situation of make-believe, that It can be likened to a prolonged incarceration. More so as I was so alone with nobody to share thoughts and sentiments to convey to with nowhere to go while forbidden to improve. The irony of it all is, unlike real felons behind bars, it was not a reckoning of remorse and self-redemption, but being infused with folly, degeneracy and abject wickedness that is directly and consistently “lodged in front of my face” as I tried to incessantly do away with it in the guise of a realistic actor. The things that they would insinuate in my period of theatrics is not as noble as it can be in other point of view when it is construed as an insult in my situation, what’s more if the insinuations are sheer vanities and stupidities. The more the charade entails energy and efforts and delves deeper for realistic results, the more it cuts wounds on the psyche, hence hatred and sense of covert anger. And still, it was also a test of will to withstand the complexity, the bending of the mind confined to subterfuge, the flexing of mental gymnastics with every observable phenomena involving so much hubbub but does not bear altogether any true meaning and value. To what extent I may be brought to endure is to what degree my soul would be fired to bestir about a determination to survive. I just had to keep myself always afloat while swimming in “uncharted waters”. The incarceration was worse than a solitary confinement in a dark dungeon. There might have been some sort of fleeting gratification in the delusion of being drawn into “pomp and pageantry”, but that was a very destructive proposition. The psyche is exalted for nothing whereupon the exaltation only makes up for a vast emptiness to where it is undone without consequence, when at the changes in reality, the sharp difference from where it departs makes an impact to mark a revealing contradiction. It constitutes a “macro-prison” in which human nature revolves around a wide range of activity and see the observable view to remain the same, impassable beyond, like a penal colony or enclosed prison bars. By way of empty grandiloquence, a real malice and denigration insues in such a disturbing difference in a shift of realities. At a twist when the deceptive nature in the air of pretense snaps, the ensuing revealing reality which seemingly comes out to be an apparition of utter wretchedness as all that transpired came to naught with all that corresponding fallouts will not be so surprising from the one who “aided” it on through all the way. It is just an expectable stuff being conscious of his own act. But as I exerted pretense and deceit to bypass folly and degeneracy, that upon coming

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to a twist in their attitude switch it resulted in a loss of confidence, I could only care less and just do not harbor a disposition to regain them. These periods of struggle and terrible psychological trauma throughout the time I call diversion as I assume it to be comparable to a felon in jail, as I have already said, that issued a reverse effect on me, and made me covertly be borne with hatred, it is the reverse on the other way around when it ought to be a time of remorse and self redemption in an actual incarceration. And at the twist into exposure and disengagement, a later scenario on my part when I am about to be “freed” as I seeth with a want for vengeance - is analogous to feelings generated in first hours of being thrown in jail still on the way for soul searching, yet still, burning with rage of unrepentant aura. Such that for the nefarious cravings, charged with want for retribution, when my ordeal is coming to an end in “freedom” (disengagement), stronger though souls prevents such evil acts, although through time from then on, the process of long recovery dissipates the toxic air in a newly experienced atmosphere. At length, more of the first periods of my disengagement and succeeding moments, it is as such that throws me into an intense feeling of intense sense of abandon, of complete sense of resignation and withdrawal of which conversely, a prisoner freed rejoices while assuming a period of personal renewal. At this point, I would still wallow in gloom, a captive of one’s own lurid imaginations. Coming from an abrupt change in atmosphere had driven me to think the unthinkable, the darkest and most nefarious of thoughts in a “penalty served” that affected no remorse. These moments of psychological upheaval are when the most gruesome of crimes are committed by stubborn and short-sighted minds. The long process of healing even surpasses the time of prolonged actual ordeal, although the path to tread ahead has never been the same again whence I started my goals. I could still engage in a clash by the residues of the wayward experience which still burns a fiery spur to retribution, but to have traversed all the trials and tribulations would be like an “easy walk” for me to hold off a deviant impulse. My departure from DBM marked a turning point of a life gone astray. As the immediate past can not be blown easily away where the path I was l led turned out to be askew, I have become not the artist I wanted to be at this point, whose time and energy spent to have withstood the ordeal could have produced monumental results otherwise. The time frame in the whole scenario has cost so much guts and grits and mental absorption more than a multi-awarded artist would

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have spent for. But I had been to a deep maelstrom, yet emerged with body and soul intact and my inherent nature never totally vanquished and perverted in so confounding circumstances. Bouncing back with an altered outlook never diminished the determination and passion that molded me. The aftereffects in DBM affair could have easily led me to final ruin, but a beckon to a new life still supervened the air to offer me a glimmer of hope even in darkest hours, when time is now fully in my own hands. If in the beginning, painting was a pure and direct approach in communion with nature, I still now bear a chance to connect with its essence by directly seeing what supervenes to show on the horizons even in a deportment diluted by matters already wrought on the psychological. Whatever a way, I might still get a chance to crack what is at hand in my own natural way and however a variance it has come for a kind of pursuit. A straightforward way is still the more desirous, my life, however thrown into disarray as it is. Although I now have to carry the burden of character still being laden with many distractions that continually haunt, I had to go on and practically bury everything about it into oblivion in day-to-day affairs. Life after DBM continued with many succession of new little ventures but I never raised matters concerning it even if it came to be mentioned itself which I only blankly faced. At first, my drive of a want for vengeance had been at its heights, the more upon seeing some of them that stirs my wrath, but it just won’t go away if I do not have to avoid them. When hatred was mustered in a protracted and very intensified fashion it would not just easily die away, even if consistently brought to the background. Comparably prolonged periods of obliviousness and denial might wither it away, and purposely envision them as a distant nightmare of the past, even if an object of incitement is within sight, visualizing it as a picture that don’t exist anymore in practical reality which impact could already become ineffectual in the long run. The succeeding activities that I am gratified to be occupied just put up a prevalent air to dampen and render it a receding image of thought unworthy of any fuss. It would pose as a detached reality that no more touches a chord for inadvertent reaction upon an intentional or given stimulus. It may not already bear the pressure to incite my temperament that could have still swayed it upon release from torment, in which the residual aftermath, brought forth, could raise a spell of waywardness to tread on every direction of decadence and degeneracy. It would be on my own sole discretion alone, being

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subjected to promiscuous beckons, but the most livable exigency prevails when I could still see the resplendence of life. I reject violence, insulting or trolling them. To be able to live normally as if nothing had transpired when it amounted to stirring a kind of monstrosity, would be enough to shame them of their impulse that pesters and spread folly when it has no more ground to go. Gradually everything will go back to normal and imbibe the freedom from a situation akin to a convicted felon.

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