I live in a cottage in a canyon called Los Refugios del Arrayán. It's where the Mapocho River is born, fed by many mountain streams. At night when the noise of the traffic of the street below dies down, I can hear the song of the stream.
I am surrounded by the view of the mountains.
That huge palma chilena is right in front of my cottage. It's kind of emblematic: it is, to my mind, Filipinas greeting me each morning.
I don't miss the ugly, sad, decadent cities of Republika ng Pilipinas. They are to me the rubble of Hiroshima without the resurrection. My heart goes out to my paisanos and paisanas, especially to the children. Being born to and growing up surrounded by ugliness, by meanness, by vanity and greed.
I think of my mission as a writer as that of being an ant trying to awaken the moral conscience of my people, which was put to sleep beginning in 1901. Biting Filipinos' bad consciences. Or being a horsefly. Un tábano.
Our collective moral conscience was just awakening in all its glory. Whereupon it was bludgeoned nearly to death, and, mortally wounded, crawled into the grave it was made to dig for itself by the invader and his minions.
I am an ant wielding a Giant Pen.
This is why it has been so hard for me to push it.
But we all --- each and everyone of us --- find ourselves somehow in this same situation.
All Filipino writers, who write to serve, more than to milk the golden cow or grab the goose that lays the golden balut eggs.
So I don't think I am anything special --- me, myself and I, E.M., am the least of the low.
The only "special" thing about me, I think, is that I have not given up pushing that Pen, and serving the Giant Hands who created it, who are inspiring me, whispering to me, guiding me, showing me ... gifts. The most Wonderful Gifts that this ant could never have imagined into being by herself.
Of course, to have taken the road less traveled exacts a high price.
But treasures are not buried downtown, nor are they kept under lock and key in bank vaults.
They are buried far away in the kabundukan. Sila'y nakalibing sa liblib na puoc.
Today, mining for copper, for gold and other precious minerals in Chile is done automatically, remotely, from control rooms. Yes, they use giant excavators, those huge silver cylinders that spin and melt the rock. After humans drilled holes in patterns and stuck the explosive charges and electronic fuses into each hole. Then the humans safely leave the tunnel. The control room presses the button. Boom!
But mining for the secrets of the human soul cannot be done this way. It must be done the age-old, the hard way.
It's also very mental.
It is in reality, done with the consciousness.
I'll leave it here then.
Just add that, in our "reasonable, pragmatic, efficient, no-nonsense" mentality, you have to be crazy to pursue the mining of the soul.
But a soul as rich as that of Filipinas was crying to be mined, and crazy me, I heard her sigh, and knew she was inside me, because I heard the echo of her weeping as if from an ancient well in my own depths. I wept with her. I heard myself!
I had always done, from childhood. I just didn't know.
So ... in Chile, mining country par excellence.
Don't you think it's just a teensy-weensy bit poetic?
Chile, land of poets.
Poor, unpublished ones.
Ah------I thought the U.S. was my country, but she wasn't, she was my babysitter. She actually kidnapped me.
But I found my way here.
From the Cordillera Central to la cordillera de los Andes.
Poética Menor
"El lenguaje común menciona cosas exteriores, por lo tanto ilusorias.
La realidad habla por boca del Poeta"
Here, in Chile, la República de Filipinas, Ang Repúblika nang Filipinas, spoke to my heart, and in the quiet of the Andes, I heard Her.
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