By Charisse C. AcquisioNOVEMBER is usually attributed to burning lamps on the eaves of our homes and setting out food for the departed.
In like manner, one could feel that the veil between the two separate worlds is just thin. Thus, November would always pull me back to my Lola's memoirs.
As a cultural practice, we set fires and light torches near our houses to guide her and other bereaved family members to the funeral meal that awaited them. Then, we would gather as complete families to eat, drink, make music, dance, and celebrate the love that we continue to share with them.
As the burning torch would keep its blaze, it always brings me to medias res when Lola used to tell stories.
Most of her stories speak volumes to Cordillera's past and even present philosophies and belief systems. In one way or another, her stories brought out my indulgence to the fascinating facets of Literature.
Every time my Lola is done sharing a chapter of her story, I'd always think -- if the history of Cordillera was not exactly written and, if its literature was not thoroughly transmitted, or they were at least hinted, in the dump.
For rummaging through its foul purlieus, I had several times been surprised and shocked to find relics of my own life tossed out there to blow away or not.
And yet not the blow that something else was, something that impressed me even more is with how closely the dump reflected the village's intimate life. This tingling thought often gets in my mind whenever I get to recall the story of my Lola about the relics of her nuang or carabao.
She once had this carabao, whose picked skeleton lay out somewhere in Bakun. Her nuang had been incurably crippled with no much reason to consider. She had worked then for months to make her nuang well, had fed it by hand, curried it, and talked to her forefather into having iron braces made for the carabao's front legs.
Although, Lola had not known that the nuang would have to be destroyed. A few days later, she found the nuang's skinned body, with the braces still on his crippled front legs, lying on the dump.
Now, I've been thinking, not even finding the nuang's body cured me of going to the dump, though my father forbade me on pain of cholera or worse.
The place fascinated me, as it should have. For this gave me the most tantalizing glimpses into our neighbors' lives and our own; it provided an aesthetic distance from which to know myself, ourselves.
The village dump was our poetry and our history.
We took it home with us by any vehicle, bringing back into the village, the things the village had used and thrown away.
Probably, the best way for us to keep our treasures which, always depict our rich culture, is to deem just how helpful literature is I our lives. Yes, it's maybe seldom useful, but always memorable.
I remember lola's nuang and her stories; I regret her yet. I regret her more whenever I hear elderly stories and chants during mourning nights.
Hence, in loving memory of our bereaved "chanters and story-tellers", let their chants and stories be recreated into any would-be-remarkable pieces that rather depict the rich signs of our culture.
In like manner, one could feel that the veil between the two separate worlds is just thin. Thus, November would always pull me back to my Lola's memoirs.
As a cultural practice, we set fires and light torches near our houses to guide her and other bereaved family members to the funeral meal that awaited them. Then, we would gather as complete families to eat, drink, make music, dance, and celebrate the love that we continue to share with them.
As the burning torch would keep its blaze, it always brings me to medias res when Lola used to tell stories.
Most of her stories speak volumes to Cordillera's past and even present philosophies and belief systems. In one way or another, her stories brought out my indulgence to the fascinating facets of Literature.
Every time my Lola is done sharing a chapter of her story, I'd always think -- if the history of Cordillera was not exactly written and, if its literature was not thoroughly transmitted, or they were at least hinted, in the dump.
For rummaging through its foul purlieus, I had several times been surprised and shocked to find relics of my own life tossed out there to blow away or not.
And yet not the blow that something else was, something that impressed me even more is with how closely the dump reflected the village's intimate life. This tingling thought often gets in my mind whenever I get to recall the story of my Lola about the relics of her nuang or carabao.
She once had this carabao, whose picked skeleton lay out somewhere in Bakun. Her nuang had been incurably crippled with no much reason to consider. She had worked then for months to make her nuang well, had fed it by hand, curried it, and talked to her forefather into having iron braces made for the carabao's front legs.
Although, Lola had not known that the nuang would have to be destroyed. A few days later, she found the nuang's skinned body, with the braces still on his crippled front legs, lying on the dump.
Now, I've been thinking, not even finding the nuang's body cured me of going to the dump, though my father forbade me on pain of cholera or worse.
The place fascinated me, as it should have. For this gave me the most tantalizing glimpses into our neighbors' lives and our own; it provided an aesthetic distance from which to know myself, ourselves.
The village dump was our poetry and our history.
We took it home with us by any vehicle, bringing back into the village, the things the village had used and thrown away.
Probably, the best way for us to keep our treasures which, always depict our rich culture, is to deem just how helpful literature is I our lives. Yes, it's maybe seldom useful, but always memorable.
I remember lola's nuang and her stories; I regret her yet. I regret her more whenever I hear elderly stories and chants during mourning nights.
Hence, in loving memory of our bereaved "chanters and story-tellers", let their chants and stories be recreated into any would-be-remarkable pieces that rather depict the rich signs of our culture.
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