Climate

DANSOLI BY STEFANI J. ALVAREZ-BRÜGGMANN

Art by Fanny Beury

The Sanaysay as Site of Speculation:

Notes on Translating the Philippine Essay

 

I 

When I translate the essayistic prose—the Filipino sanaysay and Binisaya gumalaysay—of Stefani J. Alvarez-Brüggmann, I don’t think about the fixed taxonomies of the Anglosphere: British life-writing’s insistence that experience must be shaped, American creative nonfiction’s divine command that trauma must build toward revelation. Canonical, calcified, claustrophobic. I refuse this grammar of closure, a form of violence. 

 

I think instead of the “Prince of Filipino Printers,” the typographer Tomás Pinpin (b. 1580 or 1585 CE), essaying as early as the dawn of the 17th century. I think of testimonial memorias, reverent pagninilay, and songlike prosa poetica, threaded through the Spanish Colonization of the Philippines to the revolutionary Propaganda Movement and Tagalog modernists like Alejandro G. Abadilla.  
 
I think of the gumalaysay, the essay of our shared Binisaya native-tongue, suspended between biographical sketch and philosophy, oratory speech and memoir, journalism and satirical humor. Must the shape-shifting gumalaysay adhere to exactness, or can it remain intimate? Should it claim authoritatively like a magistrate, or contemplate in quiet like a monk? Elusive, never settling for resolve. Forever asking, freed from the sin of certainty. 

 

I think of the sanaysay, the essay in Filipino, the language which Alvarez-Brüggmann primarily writes in, the language I translate her from. I think of the holism of its etymology: “sanay,” as in attempt, repetition, bodily memory, “saysay,” as in meaning but also weight. The sanaysay as that which is practiced, rather than perfected.  

 

I think of early 20th-century Filipino essayists: Policarpio Y. Cuanico, whose philosophical musings in Hiligaynon were as sharp as they were profound; Florencia Lagasca’s nationalist Ilocano-language satires; Patricio M. Janer, critiquing with sociopolitical truths in Bikolano; Maria V. Kabigon’s Cebuano Binisaya suffragist proto-feminisms; Zoilo Hilario, uncovering historiographies in Kapampangan.  

 

II 

When I translate Alvarez-Brüggmann’s prose, I don’t think of creative nonfiction, at least not the way it has been imported, packaged, and hawked like cans of Spam in workshops, prizes, journals, publishers, and writers’ circles in the Philippines. Not these writing programs’ self-coronated edicts of “show, don’t tell” or the God-given inviolate grace of Truth. I know these mandates well. I once helped enforce them, sifting through submissions for Creative Nonfiction, the magazine-slash-genre’s holy scriptures founded by the godfather himself, Lee Gutkind. 

 

There was a time I believed in all that. A creative writing professor, an award-winning prose writer, leaning across the workshop table: “There has to be crisis.” As though an essay is fiction in disguise. As though we must contort it to fit the models of New Journalism of the ‘60s (Talese, Didion, Capote, Dillard, Mailer, Wolfe) or the Memoir Craze of the ‘90s (Sedaris, Karr, McCourt). As though David Lazar weren’t right when he diagnosed our moment as the “memoirization of the essay” and the “essayification of the memoir.” To translate Alvarez- Brüggmann is to unlearn the demand for crisis and peel back these assumptions, to recognize how thoroughly Americanized my notions of the essay had become.  

III 

When I translate Alvarez-Brüggmann’s prose, I think about Theodor W. Adorno’s defense of the essay as that which “has no name” and condemned as hybrid (“Der Essay als Form”), as though purity were ever the point. I think of Philip Lopate’s recognition that our anxiety about genre is really an anxiety about invention, about who gets to claim the real. But perhaps there are no rules. Perhaps the idea of separating fiction from nonfiction is an Anglophone neoliberal impulse, an imperialist urge for certainty. As Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton wrote in Shapes of Native Nonfiction, we must “destabiliz[e] the colonial demand for factual information”—where hauntology (to appropriate Derrida), like the dansoli, resides in the voids of communal memory and indigenous epistemology, freed from the archives of Empire.   

 

And then there is Alvarez-Brüggmann, who writes of ambiguity and absence, second-guessing: “Dansoli. Was it bright, like bougainvillea? Did it bloom with the urgency of a downpour or the patience of a drought? Did its scent curl into the night like the shy intoxication of dama de noche?” 

IV 

When I translate Alvarez-Brüggmann, I dwell in a space where prose drifts, like time dissolving. Verb tenses shift with the ebb and flow of memory and forgetting. Her words inhabit a world where the boundaries between waking and dreaming blur like following Alice down the rabbit hole, wandering with Dorothy past the yellow brick road, losing oneself with Christopher Robin in a Hundred Acre Wood timeless afternoon.  

 

Writing of this Anzaldúan neplanta, in between myth and materiality, Alvarez-Brüggmann writes to ask. Not what was, but what could be. “Perhaps it wasn’t a flower at all but a figment, a dream conjured by the gods, seeded in the orchards of our forgetting,” she marvels.  

V 

To translate Alvarez-Brüggmann is to re-dream the skylines of her dreamland, to wander the expansive geographies where her essays dissolve themselves from form and float free like dansoli’s erasure from barrio memory. I think of essay films, the hermit crab essay, graphic memoirs, the sound collage or biomythographies, as much as I think of Alvarez-Brüggmann’s individuated lore. I think of the speculative essay, as Robin Hemley and Leila Philip envisioned it, of essays that privilege the figurative over the literal, ambiguity over certainty, meditation over reportage—where speculation becomes not faithlessness of truth but its most fertile ground: Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire, Anne Carson’s Nox, Xiaolu Guo’s Nine Continents, Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return, and Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal.  

VI 

Ultimately, to translate Alvarez-Brüggmann is to revisit the borderlands that demarcate genres, to traverse them as they refuse to be pinned down. It is to think of the Chinese suibi, the Japanese zuihitsu, the Tibetan tsom: forms that thrive in miscellany and nonconformity. To think of the Chinese xiaopinwen and sanwen (anything not-verse) or the German Denkwürdigkeiten (memoirs) and Versuch (attempt). To think of the Japanese kenbun-ki (a record of everything seen and heard) or the Russian opyty (experiments) and ocherki (sketches). 

 

I think of essays as they might be in another time, not only those written by Sei Shōnagon, Plutarch, Tao Qian—or Montaigne’s essais, St. Augustine’s Confessions—and the rest of the dog-tired canon. But also of essays by Ziusudra of Sumer, Zhuge Liang of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Ennatum of Akkad, Azwinaki Tshipala of 315 CE South Africa, Theophrastus of Erresos, Shōtetsu of ancient Edo, Max Bense of post-war Germany. 

 

I think of the travel memoirs of Ouyang Xiu and Lady Sarashina, of Persian mystics and Japanese court ladies, of Buddhist monks Yoshida Kenkō of the Kamakura shogunate and Shantideva of ancient Gujarat.  

 

I think of field notes from the quotidian of Judith Schalansky and Bushra al-Maqtari, dissolving into the aching lyrical past, as in Sylvia Plath’s illness diaries and Wole Soyinka’s prison memoirs and the clearsighted namings of Lu Xun and Annie Ernaux.  
 
I think of how Alvarez-Brüggmann engages in an intimate dialogue with these writers, how her prose carries the introspective candor of Montaigne, the fragmented brilliance of Sei, the confessional tension of Augustine, the autofictional blur of Ernaux, the bitter irony of Lu, and more. 

VII 

When I translate Alvarez-Brüggmann, I navigate terra incognita blindfolded, essaying to map a body of work that resists the very act of its mapping. Dansoli’s “name lives on. Whether fragrant or fraught with thorns […] [it] lingered in my mind,” she writes. Her writings inhabit a universe of her own creation, a dreamland full of questions, possibilities, and echoes of histories—histories which are hers, and also ours. 

 

To consume the mythopoetic, the lyric, the anti-essay, the epistolary, and all that and more in a singular text. To think of the genre’s silenced pasts: Swahili chronicles, First Nations mythohistories, Arabic Maqāmah, Aboriginal dreamtime stories. To think of the genre’s still-comings: Twitter threads, zines, Instagram stories, podcasts, TikTok videos, installation art, VRs/ARs, webtoons, Substack newsletters, docu-games. To dare us to envision: What if?  

 

What if essays were the uncontainable that other genres refused to be?  

 

What if essays were everything others will never become? 

Alton Melvar M. Dapanas

Dansoli

Translated from Filipino and Binisaya by Alton Melvar M. Dapanas

In Maranao language, dansoli is both a white fragrant flower and a palace handmaiden (A Maranao Dictionary, 1967). It graces the tenth river in the mythos of Mindanao’s waterlore (Francisco R. Demetrio’s Myths & Symbols, Philippines, 1978) and names a creek in coastal Gusa of present-day Cagayan de Oro. Yet dansoli also blooms in absence and vanishing: it is the name of a dwindling small village in Gujarat and of a castle’s ruins in Dublin. It is also a word in the Xebero tongue along the Peruvian Amazon, spoken by just 30 people as of 2012.  

The publication adviser called me in. “Duol na ang deadline,” she said, speaking about the short story I’d submitted, the story that was supposed to find its place in the campus paper, “kung naa ka pa’y ubang short story nga nasulat.” Her gaze fixed on the sheet of legal-sized paper before her. Was it a question? Or a subtle hint that the story I’d handed in wasn’t enough? Her tone gave nothing away.  

  

The campus paper was nearly complete, and they’re only waiting for my short story. She asked me to revise my earlier submission, or if possible, replace it with a new one. That was her recommendation. She said it couldn’t be published, especially not in a campus paper. I watched her read aloud the title: “Mga Buwaya sa Baranggay Hall,” the crocodiles living in the barrio hall. She didn’t object, not as the publication adviser, not even as a reader. But her hesitation spoke of others’: other teachers, parents, other students, and the wider orbit of eyes that might misunderstand. Understand. What she meant, I knew, was approve. I waited for her critique. Every student who dreams of becoming a writer waits for this: word against word. I thought of the stories and poems in our textbooks, of their permanence and place. I thought of my own hope, that one day my words might also find a home there so that they live beyond me.  

 

I stared at the paper in her hands. She glanced down. Then she surprised me. She said it’s not clichéd. She even liked how I shaped it, a riff on Luha ng Buwaya—the tears of crocodiles—by Amado V. Hernandez. The novel’s chapters, assigned long ago in Reading class, had burrowed deep into me without my notice, hadn’t they? She liked my story.  

  

“Kabalo ba ka kung ikapila ni nako gibasa?” She admitted she hadn’t slept, reading it repeatedly as the characters haunted the quiet of her night. And Comrade Amado—who led farmers to fight the rich Grande family’s exploitation, who wrote his manuscript behind bars, who edited the prison newspaper Muntinglupa Courier—he, too, permeated my storytelling. In my story, the union leader was a public school teacher, seen through the eyes of one student, a campus paper editor in search of truth. Our adviser appreciated how my story bridged the then and the now, how it mirrored a fight that never truly ends. 

  

She handed the paper back to me. I slowly folded it, creasing its edges horizontally. Then I left her office. The hallways stretched ahead, dappled with the echoes of voices. I returned to the classroom. It was recess. Most of my classmates were outside, absorbed in their chats, unwrapping snacks, thumbing through their favorite pocketbooks. On other days, even I would tuck a Helen Meriz, Zoila, or Gilda Olvidado romance novella into the pages of my Social Studies textbook. Their battered covers I could snag for five pesos on any sidewalk. But today, I sat at my desk. I opened the notebook I kept separate from all others, its leaves crowded with drafts of poems and stories, some barely separable from collages. Bits of magazines and newspapers pasted in constellations. I clicked my pen, coaxing the ink to flow, but it refused me. Outside the window, a garden stretched in the distance, vibrant with plants and flowers: spiky cacti, climbing vines, roses blooming in stubborn elegance. Bougainvillea overflowed in every hue imaginable, while santan and gumamela bushes bordered the edges. These gardens were the work of Science class projects and Home Economics assignments, each plant meticulously labeled with its Latin and common names. The labels stood like protest signs in miniature. Not scrawled grievances, but a quiet insistence on being named and known. For where else does the cry for recognition begin but in the roots of identity itself? 

  

I stepped into the garden. My eyes roved across the signs and searched as though I might stumble upon a myth: dansoli. The name of our barrio, Dansolihon, the elders said, meant a place brimming with dansoli, a flower no one alive could even recall. The elders, with their stories braided in the gnawed threads of time, could not say what it looked like or why it had disappeared. Dansoli. Was it bright, like bougainvillea? Did it bloom with the urgency of a downpour or the patience of a drought? Did its scent curl into the night like the shy intoxication of dama de noche? Perhaps it wasn’t a flower at all but a figment, a dream conjured by the gods, seeded in the orchards of our forgetting. 

  

I stopped searching for dansoli. I let it remain as it was: a flower with a name but no shape, no scent, no season. A gap filled by legends. But my stories, I decided, would not meet the same fate. I opened my notebook again. 

  

You might not understand if I tell you my stories are not about uncovering what is lost or lending voice to the silenced. They are not revelations of truths untold, for those truths already exist, for those who have been deprived still stand and still resist. That is why I will not leave my pages blank. I will inscribe them with our stories, so they will endure, so they will not be forgotten… 

  

This was the era when logging and mining operations raged through the hinterlands of Cagayan de Oro. Our barrio lay among the 24 strung along the city’s southwestern edge, buckled against the bordering Bukidnon province. A highway ran through it, cracked with potholes and dusted by endless half-hearted repairs that flared to life only when elections loomed. It was a necessity to bind distant lives: farmers from the farthest reaches of Talakag, Bukidnon, to the scattered sitios and barrios that dotted its course. 

  

The road crawled through dense woodlands where rust-colored jeeps crept like caterpillars on the backs of mountains. The Kabula river curved below, a border dividing the vast farmlands that stretched on either side. Farther along, the land remembered what we’d forgotten: the Macahambus Cave, where battle cries during the Philippine-American War still echo in the air. Lumbia, home to the city’s domestic airport, gave way to Bayanga, where wide fields and swaying coconut trees sighed open to the skies. Mambuaya followed, with its public high school campus for youth from neighboring barrios. And at the end of the road, two hours away from the city proper, our barrio waited. Dansolihon.  

  

We were young then, foolish and fierce in the face of what we raged against as wrong. Ten of us, bound by our conviction and the vigor of our youth, joined hands with members of the barrio’s youth council. We scavenged materials: cut-up sacks, cardboard sheets, two cans of paint (red and black), and markers to carve our pleas onto placards. A makeshift barricade rose from the dirt: bamboo poles lashed together, one end weighted with gravel, the other tied with rope, ready to rise and fall. The small checkpoint cottage was erected, its nipa roof patched by barrio civilian police who lent their hands to the cause. We cleared the encroaching grass, scrubbed the worn plywood sign that bore the single word, CHECKPOINT, and repainted it until it gleamed. A corner became our kitchen: stove, pots, and pans set neatly for cooking food and boiling water, for warming our resolve against the chilly mornings. 

  

Before the trucks rumbled to life, we gathered. Barrio officials and our fellow villagers stood with us in a circle as the chief signed our permit. The meeting was brief, filled with nods and murmurs of agreement. At dawn, we took our spots. The checkpoint came alive, not as a simple rally but as a blockade, a stand against the ten-wheeler trucks that carried logs stolen from the heart of the woodlands. 

  

On the first night of the barricade, the road lay mute. No trucks came. Whispers stirred: the loggers had been warned, alerted by neighbors who worked the forests for their own survival. Some of these neighbors drove jeepneys, their seats concealing slabs of wood for illegal trade, fed by a silent commerce. These planks and rough lumber, smaller than the colossal logs ferried by trucks, carried the same story of greed.  

  

The week stretched thin. Each day bled into the next, until our permit expired, leaving us to disassemble the placards with disappointment. Not a single truck. We’d stood and waited. 

  

“Dili na uso si Rizal karon,” someone dismissively muttered. Heroism, he said, was a thing of old. 

  

But this wasn’t heroism, I tried to explain to the other villagers in the barrio. It was something simpler, more profound. A duty to the earth that had borne us, to the land, its trees, and all lives that depend on it. The laughter came low and grating. It was met by the hollow barks of unseen dogs. Their mockery pierced deeper than I cared to admit. Changing their beliefs seemed impossible.   

  

Soon, my thoughts shifted to the approaching high school graduation and a national student journalist conference up north, where I would compete in the News Writing category. Winning didn’t matter. It was about the thrill of the experience, the possibility of pulling me closer to the writer I longed to be.   

  

When the school break arrived, so did the trucks burdened with logs. They moved like dark processions. Seeing them ignited a restless urgency in us. And so another barricade was born.  We marked time in shifts. And the scent of shared meals curled around our unrelenting grit. This was no longer just an act of protest. It became something bigger than that. It became a communion of hands, voices, and faith.  

 

On one of those nights, we faced a truck. Its headlights pierced the darkness, but we didn’t move. The truck driver leaned out of his side window, “Naa mo’y permit? Naa man pod ko’y permit.” He waved a paper, the kind that carried authority, or at least some hollow pretense of it. Then silence followed. We asked the drivers to take the dispute to the barrio hall. And that’s when voices began to rise. 

  

“Peke man na!” someone from our group shouted. The accusation that the document was forged echoed.  

  

“Kamo ang peke nga mandakopay! Peke mo nga DENR!” one of the loggers shot back, challenging us. They said they passed three barrio checkpoints, in Mambuaya, Bayanga, and Lumbia, without being questioned. Even the police and the environment and natural resources ministry honored their papers. 

  

“Wala’y mandakop, kay naa man mo’y padanlog,” a voice from our side cut through the noise and named the open secret: bribes.  

  

The shouting went on. Furious words tumbled over one another. The barrio chief stepped forward. “Di ba unsa’y giingon nako kaninyo?” he spoke to us. The man who should have been our shield was now cautioning us against provoking the loggers and miners who might carry more than words as weapons. I watched him as he folded into the shadow of his own interests. Later, we learned why. Three jeepneys, his own, ferrying smuggled logs to God knows where. His silence, it turned out, was not neutrality.  

  

Days stretched into nights, and the operations marched on. But so did we. We held our ground, our barricade a flag refusing to fall. Desperation became strategy: we turned to a local radio station, then to a religious nonprofit where priests and nuns took our stories into their prayers.  

  

When we joined the larger protest in front of a research institute, the air seemed to hum with a different kind of energy. In the forum held there, as I opened my notebook and shared what I had seen, stories about our struggle poured. It was here, as more people spoke up, that the truth became impossible to ignore. This was corruption’s machinery, each piece in place because of complicity, the whole system grinding us all toward collapse.  

  

Those days felt like a fever dream. A drunken logger threatened to kill me. The sun was merciless that noon as I walked home from a meeting for our mobilization effort. His voice trembled, daring me to stand before him and to answer for blocking their operations. Terror gripped me. I ran. A kind-hearted couple, strangers, pulled me into their hut to shelter me. Later, they told me what he did: unable to find me, he turned his fury on a madre de cacao tree, hacking at it with a machete before firing his gun into the air. I did not go to the barrio hall. I did not file a complaint. What was the use when a machete would make quick work of me or, failing that, a .45-caliber bullet would settle the matter with a single shot to the temple? Instead, I spoke to him when he was sober and his rage had dulled. And I saw it for what it was. I empathized. If our protests halted the logging and mining, his livelihood would collapse. He had mouths to feed. Yet he wasn’t the enemy. How could he be, when we were both caught within the same grinding, unfeeling machinery? No, it was the system itself, its weight crushing us all, that stood in the way of justice.   

  

From the classroom window, I caught sight of a flower that seemed an anomaly, standing apart from the rest. I wandered closer to search for its name. But no small placard marked its identity. It wasn’t part of the tended garden, nor did it belong there. 

  

Dili ni apil sa science project, I mused, faintly smiling. This was not part of the experiment. It simply appeared there, sprouting in the old paint tin.  

  

“Dianthus caryophyllus,” a voice murmured behind me, “carnation.” I turned and saw our publication adviser. “Ingon nila, mao daw nang bulak nga mitubo sa dihang mihilak si Birheng Maria sa tungod sa krus ni Hesus,” she began. She told me how the carnation flowers bloomed from the Virgin Mary’s tears as she stood before the crucified Jesus Christ. How later, in 1974, carnations became a symbol for peace during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. A bloodless coup which became a movement after the 48-year Estado Novo dictatorship was felled. 

  

The flower stood before me, and I stared at it for what felt like a long time. Within its petals were centuries only told about in textbooks, and yet its name lives on. Whether fragrant or fraught with thorns, dansoli, this flower belonging nowhere, lingered in my mind. Its roots run deep, its bloom thriving in my heart.  

Dansoli

By Stefani J. Alvarez-Brüggmann

Ipinatawag ako ng aming adviser. Kinausap niya ako tungkol sa aking isinumiteng maikling kuwento na ilalathala sa school paper. “Duol na ang deadline, kung naa ka pay ubang short story nga nasulat,” pahayag niya habang pinagmamasdan ang papel kung saan nakamakinilya ang aking kuwento. Hindi ko matantiya kung humihiling ba siya ng bagong akda o kinukuwestiyon ang nakalatag kong kuwento.  

  

Patapos na ang lay-out ng aming school publication, at ang maikling kuwento ko na lang ang hinihintay. Pina-revise ang nauna kong ipinasa at kung maaari ay palitan ko raw ng bago o ng ibang kuwento. Ito ang kaniyang rekomendasyon. Hindi raw kasi maaaring ilathala iyon lalo na sa isang pampaaralang pahayagan. “Mga Buwaya sa Baranggay Hall,” binasa niya ang titulo, ang kuwentong nakamakinilya sa isang letter sized paper. Walang problema sa kanya bilang school organ adviser ngunit hindi siya sigurado kung maiintindihan ito ng mga guro at mag-aaral, ng mga magulang, at iilang makakabasa labas sa paaralan. Maiintindihan, may understatement ang kaniyang pagkakasabi. Alam kong ang ibig niyang sabihin ay matatanggap. Hinintay ko pa rin siyang magkomento hindi lang sa titulo ngunit sa kabuuan ng aking kuwento. Iyon naman ang laging hinahanap at hinahangad ng bawat estudyanteng nangangarap maging manunulat. Na habang binabasa ko ang mga kuwento, sanaysay, at mga tula sa textbook, naroon ang pag-aasam na balang araw, mailimbag din ang aking mga akda at mababasa rin ng mga mag-aaral, ng kapwa ko kabataan. Alam rin niyang naghihintay ako sa kaniyang critique kahit kanya nang ipinahayag na hindi mailathala ang naturang akda. 

  

Tulad ng dati, nakatitig ako sa hawak niyang papel. Sandali niya itong sinilip. Iyong pagsilip sa aking iniisip habang pinapasok ko ang katahimikang namagitan sa amin. Hindi raw ang sinasabi kong cliché sa paggamit ng metapora. Nagustuhan pa nga niya ang paghalaw ko nito sa Luha ng Buwaya ni Amado V. Hernandez na naka-assign sa akin noon sa aming asignaturang Pagbasa, isang individual report para sa kahingian dito. Pinili ko ang nobelang iyon na tungkol sa mga magsasakang nagkaisa, kasama ang kanilang lider na isang school teacher, upang labanan ang pananamantala at pang-aangkin sa lupa ng gahamang pamilyang Grande.  

  

“Kabalo ka ba kung kapila ni nako gibasa?” Hindi raw siya nakatulog sa gabing iyon nang mabasa niya ang aking isinumiteng maikling kuwento. Naisalaysay rin niya ang tungkol kay Ka Amado habang sinusulat ang manuskrito ng nobela na nakapiit sa kulungan at tumatayong editor sa Muntinlupa Courier, isang prison newspaper.  

  

Dahil hindi kailanman magiging gasgas ang patuloy na pakikipaglaban ng mga naaapi para sa karapatan at kalayaan. Nagustuhan niya na tila isang adaptasyon sa kasalukuyang panahon ang aking maikling kuwento. Ang karakter na lider ng unyon ay isa ring guro na hindi ikakailang nagtuturo rin sa isang pampublikong paaralan. Samantala ang PoV ay sa isang high school student na editor-in-chief ng school paper.  

  

Inabot niya sa akin ang papel. Tiniklop ko. Maingat kong tiniklop pahalang at lumabas na ako sa kanyang opisina. Bumalik ako sa classroom. Oras ng recess. Halos lahat ng mga kaklase ko’y nasa labas, abala sa kani-kanilang mga ginagawa, nagkukuwentuhan, ang iba’y nagmemerienda, ang iba’y hawak ang nakahumalingang pocketbooks. Ako man din, minsan iniipit ko sa pagitan ng HEKASI textbook ang romance novel nina Helen Meriz, Zoila, Gilda Olvidado at iba pang manunulat na hinahangaan ko sa tiglimang pisong second-hand pocketbooks sa bangketa. Naupo ako sa desk. Binuksan ko ang aking kuwaderno. Iyong notebook na hiwalay sa mga asignatura. Naroon ang ilan kong drafts ng tula at iba pang kuwento, minsan naman nagmumukhang collage ang mga pahina dahil sa samu’t saring pinagdidikit na ginupit na larawan at article mula sa magasin at pahayagan. Sinubukan kong pausarin ang bolpen. Sa labas ng bintana, natatanaw ko sa ‘di kalayuan ang isang hardin. Naroon ang iba’t ibang uri ng halaman at mga bulaklak. Mula sa matitinik na cactus, mga naglalambiting vines, naggagandahang rosas, iba’t ibang klase at kulay ng bougainvillea, santan, at gumamelang pumapalibot sa kabuuang perimetro. Palibhasa’y ni-require bilang Science project lalo na ng nasa ikalawang taon ng hayskul. Bukod pa rito may kanya-kanya ring garden ang bawat section para naman sa Home Economics. Lumabas ako’t tinungo ang hardin. Kapansin pansin na nakamarka sa bawat pananim ang siyentipikong ngalan habang sa ibaba ang karaniwang katawagan. Parang mga raliyistang may bitbit na plakard. Hindi man tungkol sa mga hinaing at mga pagtutol ang nakasulat roon ngunit saan nga ba nagsisimula ang nais isulong ang karapatan at paninindigan kundi mismong sa pagkakakilanlan.  

  

Inikot ko ang paligid. Tila nagbabakasakaling mahanap kung may makita akong pangalang dansoli. Ayon sa mga sinaunang kuwento sa aming lugar, ang dansoli ay isang bulaklak. Maaaring dito ipinangalan ang aming baranggay dahil napapalibutan ng napakaraming bulaklak raw na dansoli noon. Ngunit kung itatanong mo kung saan makakakita ng dansoli, hindi alam ng kahit sinong residente, kahit ng mga matatanda sa amin. At kung bakit bigla na lang naglaho ang mga dansoli, lingid rin sa aming kaalaman. Ito na sana ang nais kong ikuwento noon. Ngunit baka magtatapos sa isang alamat. Wala akong mahanap na basehan kung ano nga ba ang hitsura ng nasabing bulaklak na pinagmulan diumano ng pangalan ng lugar na aking kinalakhan. Kamukha ba nito ang mga boungainvillea? Kasimbango ba ito ng rosas? Sa panahon ba ng tag-ulan o ng tag-init, o sa anong buwan ito namumulaklak? Katulad ba ito ng dama de noche na sa gabi ang oras ng kanyang halimuyak? Bulaklak ba ito ng mga diyos at diyosa sa gubat? Hindi ko na itinuloy ang paghahanap sa dansoli. Mananatiling bulaklak na may pangalan ngunit walang nakakaalam at nakakakita sa tunay nitong hugis, anyo, at bango. Mananatili na lamang sa imahinasyon. Ngunit hindi ko hahayaang maging tulad ito ng aking mga kuwento. Muli kong binuklat ang papel. 

  

Maaaring hindi mo maiintindihan kung sasabihin kong ang aking mga kuwento ay hindi paglalantad sa mga nawawala, o pagbibigay boses sa mga binusalan. Hindi ito pagsasalaysay sa mga hindi pa naibubunyag dahil nariyan sila. Silang mga pinagkaitan. Patuloy na titindig at makikipaglaban. Kaya hindi ako mag-iiwan ng blangkong papel. Pupunuin ko ng aming mga kuwento upang patuloy na ipapaalala... 

  

Kasagsagan iyon ng logging at mining sa mga liblib na lugar sa Cagayan de Oro pati na sa aming baranggay. Kabilang ang aming lugar sa 24 barangay sa kanlurang bahagi ng siyudad at matatagpuan malapit sa hanggahan ng Bukidnon. Kung babaybayin ang isang napakahabang highway, na karaniwa’y lubak-lubak, maalikabok sa hindi matapos-tapos at putol-putol na pagsesemento at pagaayos sa kalsada na nangyayari lang tuwing papalapit ang eleksyon, nagdurugtong ang kabuhuyan ng mga magsasaka mula sa pinakadulong lungsod – ang Talakag sa Bukidnon hanggang sa maliliit na sitio at baranggay. Madadaanan naman ang napakalawak na kakahuyan, animo’y uod ang mga kalawanging dyipning umuusad sa highway na lagusan sa magkakatabing mga kabundukan. Madudungawan ang ilog sa Kabula na nagsisilbing border sa magkatapat na malalawak na lupain. Naroon din ang makasaysayang Macahambus Cave kung saan naganap ang ilang labanan noong Philippine-American War. Kilala naman ang Brgy. Lumbia dahil dito matatagpuan ang domestic airport, samantala ang Bayanga at iba pang sitio ay tila kanbas ng malalapad na sakahan at niyugan, ang kasunod ay ang Mambuaya na naroon ang Mambuaya National High School, ang kinikilalang alma mater ng mga estudyanteng nakatira sa mga karatig baranggay. At sa dulong bahagi na may layong dalawang oras na biyahe mula sa sentro ng siyudad matatagpuan ang aming baranggay. 

  

Napagpasyahan naming magsagawa ng isang barikada kasama ang ilan pang kabataan. Siguro nasa sampu kaming nanguna kasama ang ilang miyembro ng Sangguniang Kabataan. Nakahanda na ang mga ginupit na sako at kartolina para gawing plakard. Dalawang lata ng pinturang itim at pula, mga pentel pen at iba pang gamit sa aming kampanya sa pagpapatigil sa iligal na pagtotroso at pagmimina. Inayos na rin ang harang ng checkpoint. Tatlong magkakapatong na mahahabang kawayan ang tila nakadipa sa gitna ng kalsada at sa dulo nito ang isang sako ng graba habang sa kabilang dulo naman ang sabitan ng lubid sa tuwing hihilahin pababa at pataas. Kinumpuni na rin ang maliit na cottage na katabi nito. Tulong-tulong ang mga tanod sa pag-aayos ng dingding at atip na nipa. Kami nama’y nilinisan ang palibot, tinanggal ang mga talahib at pininturahang muli ang nakamarkang CHECKPOINT sa plywood. Inayos rin namin ang maliit na abuhan sa sulok upang magamit sa pagpapakulo ng tubig o kaya’y sa pagsasaing. Nagdala kami ng ilang gamit sa pagluluto, ng kaldero at kawali, mga plato, kutsara at baso. Kasama ang ilang opisyal ng baranggay, mga tanod, at ilang residente, nagkaroon kami ng maiksing pagpupulong bago simulan ang kampanya. Pinirmahan ni Chairman ang aming permit sa gagawing barikada. Dahil hindi lang rali ang mangyayari kundi haharangin namin ang mga sasakyang kinakargahan ng troso. Madaling araw ang karaniwang iskedyul sa paglabas ng ten-wheeler trucks. Isinara namin ang checkpoint sa oras na iyon. 

  

Unang gabi ng barikada, walang dumaang truck. Napakatahimik. Kasintahimik ng gabi. Naisip naming natunugan o kaya’y may nakapagbigay ng impormasyon tungkol sa aming ginawang aktibidad. Dahil hindi maikakailang may ilan kaming kapitbahay na nagtatrabaho sa logging at mining. Ang iba nga’y nagnenegosyo rin lalo na iyong nagmamay-ari ng pampasaherong dyip. Tablon ang tawag sa kahoy na ini-smuggle at itinatago sa ilalim ng mga upuan ng dyip. Mas maliliit ang mga ito kumpara sa trosong hinahakot ng mga trak. Ngunit kabilang din ito sa operasyon ng mga nagpapatakbo ng logging. Hanggang sa natapos ang hiningi naming isang linggong permit, kahit isang sasakyang kahina-hinalang may kargang illegal ay walang dumaan. Binaklas namin ang aming mga plakard. Tila bigo kaming harapin ang gumawa ng illegal na pagtotroso at pagmimina sa aming barangay. 

  

“Dili na uso si Rizal karon.” Isang kakilala ang nagkomento tungkol sa aming ginawang kampanya. 

  

Ipinaliwanag kong hindi naman pagpakabayani ang aming barikada. Isa itong pagpapahalaga at pangangalaga sa ating kalikasan. Isa itong pangunahing tungkulin bilang mamamayan. 

  

Sinabayan nila ng tawanan ang kahol ng mga aso. Nakakalungkot na hindi ko kayang harangan ang kanilang paniniwala. Iyon ang isa sa pinakamahirap harapin.  

  

Naging abala ako sa papalapit na graduation. At sa mga panahong iyon, pinaghahandaan ko rin ang pagpunta sa Ilagan, Isabela upang dumalo para sa National Schools Press Conference. Naging contestant ako para sa kategoryang News Writing in Filipino. Maaaring di ko na inaasahang manalo sa patimpalak, sapat na sa akin ang danas at inspirasyong ipagtuloy ang pangarap na maging manunulat. 

  

Dumating ang bakasyon sa eskuwela. At mas naobserbahan namin ang mga dumaan na trak na animo’y dambuhalang halimaw. Sunud-sunod iyon. Walang humpay na paghahakot ng troso. Nagkaisa kaming muli na magsagawa ng barikada. Parang paglalamay ang aming kampanya. Salitan kami sa oras ng pagbabantay sa checkpoint. Shifting ng oras ng grupo sa pang-umaga at pang-gabi. Palitan sa responsibilidad ng paghahanda ng pagkain at merienda. Hindi lang pagkakaibigan o ang organisasyon ang masasabi kong naitatag kundi napatatag ang kolaborasyon, ang samahan para sa iisang layon. At sa gitna ng kalaliman ng gabi, walang takot naming hinarang ang isang truck na may kargadong troso. 

  

“Naa moy permit? Naa man pud koy permit.” Ang paghahamon ng driver ng ten-wheeler truck. Ipinakita niya ang bitbit na papel na pirmado ng kung sinumang awtoridad na nagbigay ng permiso para sa illegal na pagtotroso. Inimbitahan namin silang pag-usapan ang namamagitang di pagkakaunawaan sa loob ng barangay hall. At nagsimulang nagkoroon ng komosyon. 

  

“Peke man na!” sigaw ng kasama namin. 

  

“Kamo ang peke nga mandakupay! Peke mo nga DENR!” sagot naman ng loggers. Katwiran niya, tatlong checkpoint sa Mambuaya, Bayanga, at Lumbia ang madadaanan bago marating ang siyudad. Wala namang nanghuli. Walang nangharang kahit pa ang PNP at DENR na nakabase sa bawat checkpoint. 

  

“Walay mandakop, kay naa man mo’y padanlog,” tugon ng kasama namin tungkol sa ibinibigay na padulas o suhol sa mga pulis at ilang opisyal ng DENR. Isang malaking paratang ngunit marami ang nakakaalam sa ganitong kalakaran sa kanilang operasyon.  

  

Mula sa batuhan ng salita, nagkabaklasan ng plakard hanggang sa humantong sa isang magulong sigawan at konprontasyon sa pagitan ng loggers at aming grupo. 

  

“Di ba unsay giingon nako kaninyo?” ang pahayag ng aming Brgy. Chairman. At ngayon, kami pa ang tinanong ng opisyal ng baranggay, ang mismong pinakapuno sa aming lugar tungkol sa aming ginagawang barikada. Paliwanag niyang baka mas lalala pa ang sitwasyon kung maghuhuramentado ang mga nagtatrabaho sa logging at mining. Ang ikinabahala niya, maaaring armado ang mga ito. 

  

Hindi ako makapaniwala kung paano kami tinalikuran ng taong inaasahan naming tutulong at magpapatatag sa aming kalooban. At batay na rin sa narinig namin noong gabing iyon, kabilang ang tatlong dyip ni Chairman sa humahakot ng tablon. Kaya takot siyang harapin ang isyu at madamay pa ang kanyang lihim na negosyo. 

  

Nagdaan pa ang ilang araw, walang tigil ang operasyon. Hindi rin kami tumigil sa pagbarikada. Lumapit kami sa isang radio station upang isiwalat ang isyu. Humingi kami ng tulong sa isang NGO na pinangungunahan ng mga pari at madre, gayundin, nakiisa kami sa mas malaking barikada na ginanap sa harap ng Searsolin. Dito naibunyag ang lahat-lahat. Dito ko nakita ang mas malaking hulagway ng korapsyon. Sa isang forum, naibahagi ko ang karanasang naitala sa aking kuwaderno. 

  

Bangungot para sa akin ang mga panahong iyon nang binantaan akong patayin ng isang lasing na trabahante sa logging. Tanghaling tapat, pauwi ako sa amin galing sa pagpupulong ng mga kasamahan sa kampanya. Naririnig kong may sumisigaw na harapin ko kung matapang akong humarang sa mga ginagawa naming barikada. Sa takot ko, lumayo ako. Tinulungan ako at itinago sa kuwarto ng mag-asawang nakakitang tumatakbo ako palayo sa nakasunod sa akin na may dalang palakol. At ayon sa mga nakasaksi, dahil sa galit na hindi ako nahanap, tinadtad ng trabahante ang puno ng madre cacao at pagkatapos ay nagpaputok ng baril. Hindi ako nagsumbong sa baranggay o nagsampa ng kaso sa pagbabanta na kung hindi ako makakatay, .45 ang bubutas sa aking sintido. Sa halip, kinausap ko siya sa panahong hindi na siya lango sa alak. Naintindihan ko ang kanyang poot. Na, kung mahinto ang logging at mining dahil sa aming 

pagwewelga, mawawalan sila ng ikabubuhay. At mas naintindihan kong may pamilya siyang binubuhay mula sa kanyang kinikita. Ngunit hindi siya ang aming kaaway. Kundi, ang sistema na patuloy na nagpapahirap sa kalagayan ng lipunan. 

  

Mula sa aming classroom, natatanaw ko ang pamumulaklak ng isang natatanging bulaklak. Nilapitan ko upang tingnan ang pangalan nito. Wala akong nakikitang maliit na plakard. Wala sa hardin ngunit kasama ang iba pang halaman at mga bulaklak na tulad niya ay walang nakatatak na pangalan. 

  

Dili ni apil sa Science project. Naisip kong bahagyang natatawa habang pinagmamasdan ang halamang namumulaklak sa isang lumang lata ng pintura. 

  

“Dianthus caryophyllus…” ang wika na narinig ko mula sa likuran. “Carnation.” Nilingon ko, ang aming school paper adviser. “Ingon nila, mao daw nang bulak nga mitubo sa dihang mihilak si Birheng Maria sa tungod sa krus ni Hesus,” panimula niyang pagkukuwento. At hinayaan ko siyang magpatuloy sa pagsasalaysay sa isang napakagandang kuwentong taglay ng carnation. Noong 1974, naging simbolo raw ang nasabing bulaklak sa isang payapang rebolusyon sa Portugal – ang Carnation Revolution. Nagsimula sa kudeta at sa kalaunan, kasama nang nagkakaisang mga sibilyan na nagpabagsak sa 48 taong awtoritaryanismong pamamahala ng rehimeng Estado Novo. At sa pagdiriwang ng pagpapatalsik sa diktadurya, walang putok ng baril na umalingawngaw o dugo na dumanak, kundi pag-aalay ng bulaklak ang nagpapaalala.  

  

Matagal kong pinagmasdan ang bulaklak sa aking harapan. Kasintagal ng mga kasaysayang nababasa lamang sa teksbuk, tulad rin ng mga panahong naglaho’t tila naibaon na sa limot ang hulagway, ngunit mananatili ang ngalan ng isang bulaklak. May angking bango o tinik man o wala. Mananatili ang dansoli sa aking haraya. Mananatiling nakakapit ang mga ugat at ang kanyang pamumulaklak sa aking dibdib.