I run for life

It's been years since they told her about it
The darkness her body possessed
And the scars are still there in the mirror
Everyday that she gets herself dressed
Though the pain is miles and miles behind her
And the fear is now a docile beast
If you ask her why she is still running
She'll tell you it makes her complete

I run for hope
I run to feel
I run for the truth
For all that is real
I run for your mother your sister your wife
I run for you and me my friend I run for life

It's a blur since they told me about it
How the darkness had taken its toll
And they cut into my skin and they cut into my body
But they will never get a piece of my soul
And now I'm still learning the lesson
To awake when I hear the call
And if you ask me why i am still running
I'll tell you I run for us all

And someday if they tell you about it
If the darkness knocks on your door
Remember her remember me
We will be running as we have before
Running for answers
Running for more

*****Melissa Etheridge sang this when she appeared on the Tonight show one day in November 2005. This was a year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

What's this news on bombscare again timed when the Presidency is now hounded again by fresh moves to remove her from office?

A situation that sows terror among its citizens is a condition favorable to GMA.


Guardians of the country's political and civil liberties must keep a tight watch.


GMA's bootlickers must already be preparing for harsh laws to crush a mounting resistance against their queen's rule.

Perhaps, it is just a matter of time before this country hears another order of terror again in the name of "national security."

This should best explain, the police's mouthing now of receiving intelligence reports about possible terrorist attacks.
 

A deadly combination of storm and volcano is threatening Sorsogon, and i believe the storm signal is up in some parts of the country.

This while, Mt. Canlaon, another volcano in Negros, has been spewing ash, for i think, the third time already.

GMA had fits of vomiting and a loose bowel movement, last Friday, while a bomb blasted somewhere in Maguindanao on that same day she was supposed to set foot on Mindanao.

Tonight, there's going to be a vigil at the Batasan. Citizens are preparing to launch fresh impeachment bid against this President who has questions of illegitimacy in her rule, and who has been accused of 690 murders so far of activists throughout the country in her entire term, since 2001. This is almost half way to go to make it to Marcos's record of human rights atrocities in his two-decade old rule.

 And now, where is she? Off to the Vatican to have a picture taken with the pope, to save, perhaps, what little face is left of her.

She'd better brace for an explosion.

 

Last Friday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced what she called an "endgame" strategy that would crush the reds who she sees as the cause of the country's troubles.

 

She then promised to release 1 Billion pesos, $18.7 million in emergency funds for such purpose. Part of it, she said, will be used for improving the equipment of the country's Armed Forces, such as, huey helicopters.

 

The targets of the campaign, she declared are "the armed rebels who continue to employ force and terror to achieve their political aims."

 

Within three days after she declared so, three activists had died.

 

The first to fall last Saturday was a 26-year-old peasant activist from Oroquieta City, Tito Marata, who is a spokesperson of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), a farmers' movement rallying the call to give land to the tillers.

 

Next to fall were a couple working for non-government and media organizations in Kidapawan City who were shot dead on their way home.

 

George Vigo, 48, was a project community worker for an NGO called Community and Family Services Intl, which works for children displaced in armed conflict.

 

Wife, Maricel Alave Vigo, worked as coordinator for a project with the Department Agrarian Reform that distributes solar energy to the villages. She also anchored for a radio program aired over DXND in Kidapawan City.

 

These are not armed people. Why are they the ones falling?

Besides, can a huey helicopter defeat an army of one of the world's longest-running guerilla warfare?

 

 

 

Bayan darating din ang araw

Iluluwal mo ang bagong Maria

Ang Mariang hindi tatalikod sa ‘yo

Hanggang kamatayan....

--Mula sa kantang “Maria” ng Sining Lila

 

 

Handa ka na ba Maria?

May tapang ka ba?

Isipin na ang bisig mong mapang-aruga

Ay hindi lang sanggol ang kayang madadala

 

Handa ka na ba Maria?

Labanan ang mga kamay na nakapiring sa yong mga mata?

Burahin sa isipan ang boses ni ama

Na nagsasabi sa iyo na mahina ka

 

Kung bakit hindi

Samantalang

Sa mga pagkakataong ito

Mulat ka na

Kitang-kita mo sa iyong mga mata

Kung ano ang nangyari kay Liza, Liliosa at Lorena

Ang mga walang pangalang mga inang

Naghahanap sa kanilang pinaslang na mga anak

Ang mga walang pangalang mga asawang

Naghahanap sa kanilang pinaslang na mga minahal

Maria, higit sa lahat

Mulat ka na

 

###

 

depressed kaayo ko karun.ulan kaayo sa gawas. niduyog pud akong luha sa ulan. nagpauraray. lami ihilak. actually, perte na nakong hilak. karun. nihilak ko kay nalibog ko nganong dili nako ganahan mosulat.gikapoy na kog sulat. gikapoy na pud kog reklamo. gikapoy nako sa akong mga angsts. gikapoy nako sa akong mga gikatalawan. hasta akong uyab gikapoy na sab og paminaw. siguro magpabiya na lang ko. kay loser man tingali ko. bullshit ning kinabuhia. unsaon man pagdaug ani? wa nakoy kalipay. puro na lang kahadlok. wala nakoy tingog. dili nako kadungog sa akong tingog. when you are 29 and your greatest fear is to confirm that indeed you are a loser. a loser does not have a place in this world. a loser would never know how to love. she would never be loved. her sickness is contagious.

unta, kabahin ra ni sa giingon og post menstrual syndrome. i should stop believing i am worthy of love. any love.

make some people happy. stop making other people's lives miserable. no one shall be able to comfort me. i am a loser and i guess, i am helpless.

i am as confused as i was seventeen. what a hell life is~!

"You want to fly? Grow wings. You don't like the way things are? Tell a story." - What Kim Chernin, author of the book In My Mother's House,told about what her mother used to say to her

This house sits on corral rock. The builder knew it is going to collapse one day. But because he is a fool, he still had his family stay in this house. What's worse is he made them believe that theirs is going to be a good life one day. Until one day it came, the house collapsed.

There's water boiling inside the coal black kettle. The smoke rising provides a certain drama, a movement, a sense that something is going to be okay even if there's no water dripping from the faucet because rain is yet to come one day hopefully soon in May. May, second week, my sister-in-law says so. She could tell because she has been here many summers ago. Four gallons of water a day. She says, my brother, her husband does not leave the house a day without having them full. A gallon for a bath for her and the baby girl, a gallon for washing clothes, a gallon for cooking and drinking and a gallon reserved to last the day. The creek at the hill where the water that comes out of our pipe flows from is dried up these days. It's summer but I learn to count my blessings here. This house stands at the foot of the tallest mountain in this province. But it's good they built roads that traverse the hills going to this place. My brothers could easily climb up here on their motorcycles in the same way that they can always easily leave, too. My father gifted each of the boys in the brood with motorcycles so I learned to leave by bus and so my departures had been for faraway places. Far indeed, from where I grew up in. 

As I looked on TV the elated faces of the fresh bar passers, how they reacted to the news screaming and crying in ecstasy, it suddenly dawned on me how much this country values lawyers.

Certainly, most of those faces don't look poor. Of course, it is not only that for one to be able to go to law school, one has to have money for the books, and enough money too, to afford missing four precious years of opportunities for considerably good earnings. 

This country puts so much worth on lawyers. Try asking around if how many fathers would always tend to dream of their children to become lawyers, and I'll bet if you don't come back to me saying, indeed most. And this is so, especially in the provinces. It is as if the only way one can prove to the world that one is successful is only to be either a lawyer or a doctor!

It aghast me that there may be so many lawyers in this country, they say there are about more than 40,000 registered as of last year’s Supreme Court records, (add the new lawyers now) and yet, there seems to be still a sea of those in need of legal services. Come to think of this data alone from a human rights group. It says there are about 85,000 people who have suffered worst cases of human rights violations from 2001-2003 and 400,000 people displaced during intensified military operations during those years alone. And they are talking only of the documented ones!

What about countless others, farmers who are victims of landgrabbing, Lumads who have been disenfranchised and lost in schemes planned against their ancestral lands and those put to jail for political reasons?Just how many lawyers are willing to defend them?

And just how many lawyers are now on to defending clients, especially desperate crooks in public office who are badly needing all the legal aid they can muster to escape culpability, or perhaps unscrupulous traders wanting to circumvent the laws for their own ends? Of course, where would the wise fishermen gravitate but to where the good catch is?

I just hate it that legal defense in this country have a price tag, that is almost always far beyond the reach of the poor, who are mostly the ones who are victims of injustice.

I just hate it that lawyers always have to have an air conditioned law office, a car and an elegant briefcase and suit to go with it.